My Aunt Sandy died early this morning. A few hours and many texts with my cousin later, I thought, "Oh great, now I have another day in January to be haunted by!"
Because, ultimately, when someone leaves this stratosphere, isn't it all about us, at first?
While every month brings its own anniversaries of births and deaths, milestones and memories, there are two months of my personal year that are balanced equally in blues and yellows: October holds my brother's death day and my birthday; January holds Joan of Arc's birthday and my Mom's death day. Oddly, or interestingly, they strike a balance in numbers: October 7 and October 26, then January 6 and January 27.
And now--January 10. I can't make sense of that. The numbers are off, and I'm thrown into chaos again. I kept trying to do the math...4 days after Joan's birthday, 17 days before Mom's death...no. These numbers don't automatically add up for me.
But as Deepak Chopra reminded me last night while I was reading his Book of Secrets...isn't the world born of chaos? So then--why would we assume life is not chaos? I'm paraphrasing, but that's what I took from it. Science says the world is chaos, so therefore I am!
And--within that chaos, we have to find and believe there is order...just like in the universe. We may not understand the order of the universe, but there is one, right? Just because January 10 makes no sense to me, it doesn't mean the math is wrong.
Wait--does it "make sense" that she died one month after my parent's wedding anniversary, December 10th? An event she attended, as by then she was married to my mom's brother? Hmmm. No, but that number 10 one month apart might help me remember again these light and dark anniversaries...It can put a finite known number on the infinite unknown...
Last night also happened to be the night I was officially reintroduced to Lord Tennyson. My husband quoted "Ulysses" before bed, and we talked a bit about his attitude towards life: that basically, way before Nike, Alfred was like "don't just do it--do it and feel it ALL--always!"
“How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
As tho’ to breathe were life!”
― Alfred Lord Tennyson, Ulysses
Ever since my brother died when I was 16, I've tried "to shine in use". The Joan of Arc Parade, which I started 22 years after his death, finally made me feel, THIS year for the first time--37 years after his death!!--that I was living the path I was born for.
The shine of this gorgeous parade glows with a personal usefulness for me, and that's what this blog is ultimately about: how a parade helped me make sense of life and continues to be both a metaphor and a method of balancing the equation, my equation.
How will I "use" my Aunt Sandy's death date to shine "in use" from now on? I will use this day to reach out to all of my living relatives, especially to my living aunts and uncles, to let them know I love them. To recall family stories and connections on this day and share them with my daughter, and my cousin, who shares many of these memories. To celebrate the many amazing world travels she made and make plans for my own. To wear one of the many scarves she bought me...and feel her presence hugging me. To feel gratitude that she loved me since the day I was born.
And ultimately, as Tennyson says, to continue "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
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