When Did Death Become Real For Me

Having come again to blogging with my last post I was quickly followed up on by a friend of mine. This came in the form of a blog prompt. Having no idea what a blog prompt was I became intrigued.

This post is a response to the prompt by DungeonPrompts of "WHEN DID DEATH BECOME REAL FOR YOU"

From the earliest part of my life, death seemed like something that took us away from pain. My grandparents took me to the Nazarene Church where they taught that heaven was a place of beauty and happiness. Here I began to see death as a solution to pain and not as a event to be feared.

I have thought of death as a positive transition best made at the end of a long life. I have never really feared death as a result.

That was until one day in 2009 when my dad was killed in a motor cycle accident. 

My dad passed away leaving his fourth wife widowed. To me it felt like another exit. One he'd made so many times from past relationships. Another abandonment of his family and obligations. Of course this was the hurt kid inside me who was still holding on to anger towards him from my perception of his wrongs.

I was angry at his departure and felt justified in my judgement of his life. A few weeks after his departure I went on a vision quest. 

A quest I have been on since.

As I have come to realize my father's death as much as anything has been a catalyst to live my life. Not a catalyst to use the time I have. Not a catalyst to let go of past wrongs. Not a catalyst to be honest. Not a catalyst to be loving and kind to others. Not a catalyst to accept my own mortality. Those things I could find without his death. 

Instead it has been a catalyst to look for and find the repetitive patterns that do not support my highest and best. A catalyst to question my judgement of others and look for my projections of my own anxiety there in.

A catalyst to be a greater presence in the world than I believed/believe I could/can be within this life time.

As I look now upon my judgments of his life and the cycles I thought I saw there. I realize they are just reflections of my own patterns in the surface of his life. My patterns of setting up situations and people for me to be disappointed. Patterns of using my judgments to bolster my fragile ego to camouflage my internal anxiety. Anxiety that is deep rooted in the belief I am not good enough. Anxiety born of the anticipation of abandonment from everyone and everything.

I still believe that death is a transition. I however, am learning that the transition may not be one away from pain. The pain of anxiety is not a reality of our world but a reflection of my own internal fears about the nature of the world and my place in it.

Today I chose to live happy and fulfilled. Today I chose to let go my fear of abandonment and explore my life.