Part 2 ? No, not yet.
I know I should write part 2 of my funeral home visit, but I am not in the mood to write about embalming; I don't feel like explaining what the dead can tell you and believe me when I say they can tell you plenty.
In a way they are far more honest than us, they have no time to make up stories, the irony is neither do we but few of us really think about that.
We get so wrapped up in unimportant shit that the truth of it all gets snowed under mounds of stupid things, like what new electronic doodad will make us feel complete; what kind of couch will we get for the lounge room; who will win the big game on Sunday.
Such small, small things in the scheme of it all.
But you know that don't you. We all know that.
A league of hungry ghosts shoving stuff down our collective gullets to try and fill the holes in our own philosphies.
Sometimes I get overwhelmed that I have forgotten something very important, the more I try to remember the harder it is to grasp, like chasing a dream on waking.
Often I have found myself scribbling absently on a piece of paper only to find I have written the word 'remember' in joined script all over the page.
So what am I meant to remember. What is it that awaits my recall.
I have a sneaking suspicion it has something to do with a feeling I use to get a lot as a kid and only occasionally get now.
It happens at night when I am in that zone between awake and asleep, I feel myself expand like I am a giant balloon filling the room then going beyond my room until I am everywhere at once. Then shrinking back to normal like a universal accordian experiencing the infinite and finite within one breath.
That is the best way I can describe it, my humanness has trouble in the deciphering, because humanness needs words and the other part that knows the truth is beyond words. So I am stuck in the middle of knowing because the two halves of me exist in different spheres. I have this thought that perhaps death is when those two parts become one again, death isn't the end at all; death is in fact the start of complete understanding.
When I told my Mum about my embalming experience she asked, "did you sense anything from the bodies?" I think I said 'calm' but I take that back, calm suggests peace and peace suggests something there to 'feel' and that doesn't fit. It took a few days to comprehend but what I felt was vacancy, not like a furnished house left to go to wreck and ruin, but of a house cleaned out and packed up, all it's contents Uhauled away.
You see, that funeral home visit really did effect me.
-d
In a way they are far more honest than us, they have no time to make up stories, the irony is neither do we but few of us really think about that.
We get so wrapped up in unimportant shit that the truth of it all gets snowed under mounds of stupid things, like what new electronic doodad will make us feel complete; what kind of couch will we get for the lounge room; who will win the big game on Sunday.
Such small, small things in the scheme of it all.
But you know that don't you. We all know that.
A league of hungry ghosts shoving stuff down our collective gullets to try and fill the holes in our own philosphies.
Sometimes I get overwhelmed that I have forgotten something very important, the more I try to remember the harder it is to grasp, like chasing a dream on waking.
Often I have found myself scribbling absently on a piece of paper only to find I have written the word 'remember' in joined script all over the page.
So what am I meant to remember. What is it that awaits my recall.
I have a sneaking suspicion it has something to do with a feeling I use to get a lot as a kid and only occasionally get now.
It happens at night when I am in that zone between awake and asleep, I feel myself expand like I am a giant balloon filling the room then going beyond my room until I am everywhere at once. Then shrinking back to normal like a universal accordian experiencing the infinite and finite within one breath.
That is the best way I can describe it, my humanness has trouble in the deciphering, because humanness needs words and the other part that knows the truth is beyond words. So I am stuck in the middle of knowing because the two halves of me exist in different spheres. I have this thought that perhaps death is when those two parts become one again, death isn't the end at all; death is in fact the start of complete understanding.
When I told my Mum about my embalming experience she asked, "did you sense anything from the bodies?" I think I said 'calm' but I take that back, calm suggests peace and peace suggests something there to 'feel' and that doesn't fit. It took a few days to comprehend but what I felt was vacancy, not like a furnished house left to go to wreck and ruin, but of a house cleaned out and packed up, all it's contents Uhauled away.
You see, that funeral home visit really did effect me.
-d
posted by D. at Tuesday, January 18, 2005
