Trust

by Stephanie F. Earls

In the face of death, whatever form it takes (a relationship, your spirit, your inspiration, an illness, a career...) we begin to question. It is as if everything in our lives hits a brick wall, gets thrown up in the air, turned upside down, shuffled and we are forced to look at it all, bring it back in and figure out how it all fits.

It's been 13 days since my grandmother died. I stood by her side and watched one of the most miraculous things I have ever been witness to, her transcendence from one state of being to another, something so huge, so divine and so unexplainable I can hardly imagine that I actually witnessed it. And at the same time, I know I did, it's in my veins, it's in my breath, it's in my being. I have been changed. In letting me witness her "death", my grandmother opened me in a way I could not have imagined.

I realized how she chose her space, her place, her time. I see how she waited until each of her loved ones was exactly where they needed to be in relation to her.

Though I could not see her form with my eyes after she let go of the body, I have a knowledge of it in feeling which is unmistakable yet which I find hard to articulate and having turned to written word all my life, it has been so strange to feel blank over the last couple of weeks.

I am left with one word which it comes down to: trust.

I have opened this blog everyday hoping to share something and each day leaving it blank. Finally today I have just decided to say some of what's floating around and it comes down to these thoughts:

You live and you die. If you can breathe, you're alive, so be alive, trust. Sometimes we walk in our bodies dead. Now that I have seen a spirit vacate a body, I know dead,  and I know I'm not. And if you are reading this, neither are you. So, be alive...YOU ARE! And I am not just saying you are alive. I am saying you ARE. Just like those we love who have "died". They are. Their form is changed but they are. Trust.

The night I came home from sitting with my grandmother when she died I had a flashing memory of her rose bushes, which grew next to her house.  I remembered her explaining to me what thorns were and how they hurt if you are not present when you hold a stem, but how just a little awareness will keep you safe, just like the rose has grown it's own protection too. Each beautiful and pure and perfect thing has its protection built in. Trust.

As I remembered her roses it was late in the evening and very dark and my daughter was afraid to take our pup out on her own. I offered to go with her to gather wood to start a fire and also bring our trash up to the curb. These small tasks put me in my backyard (an unlikely place for me lately) going by my neglected and overgrown garden.

On this cold October night, a week after our first frost and with colored leaves sprinkled on the lawn,  I noticed a flash of hot pink and looked twice...and found two roses blooming on my rose bush, which had not bloomed all summer and then on this night had two bright, fresh buds. Decide for yourself, to me it's no accident. Just another reminder that there is more going on to take care of us than we realize. Trust.

So as I have been questioning my life in the face of death I began to see how my grandmother did all the things yoga teaches. She was present, she was aware, she took action, she trusted. She just did.

With her totally gone from her physical form and yet totally alive in her spirit, in my heart, I have looked at her life and see how she just was what she was. She did not talk or theorize about it, there was no fanfare, no championing. She simply walked her walk, everyday, and in the end everyone could see clearly her legacy of love, her legacy of practicality. There was no mystical secret to who she was or how she functioned, but she was complete and beautiful magic. Just like these impossibly blooming roses on a cold October night.

And finally, in the midst of my questioning my path, my mom brought home, from the shuffle of Bumma's personal belongings, four squares of paper. On them in her handwriting were four yoga postures and their benefits. As she wrote them: Tree pose, Spine Twist, Cat Stretch and Ragdoll. I did not know Bumma even knew what was yoga was. But as if the the gifts she's left were not enough, I have four squares of paper staring at me saying, keep going.

Trust.