Benjy Wertheimer shared this earlier this morning on Facebook. Powerful, poignant and deeply resonant- good words to wake up to. He had a powerful reference point for it in his own story of love, loss, grief and more love. I know we will each have our own context.
For me, in this moment, it is much about my last few months as I wrote about in my previous post- feeling as though my heart had been pulverized as I watched my 38-year-old son Ben become less and less responsive after an eye surgery where they had to go in through his cranial bones. Eventually he turned around but there were a few days that were without question the longest days of my life as i wondered if he was slipping away for good, as I saw the nurses have to restrain him when he didn't know what was happening and was trying to pull out his feeding tube and many leads to the EEG glued to his head, when he didn't know where he was or why he was there, when I saw nothing but fear and confusion coursing through his being . I am still processing it with an awareness of impermanence and the strangeness of the illusory passage of time and the wrenching of the heart. And the softness and love that permeates through it all.
“You will lose everything.
Your money, your power, your fame, your success, perhaps even your memory.
Your looks will go.
Loved ones will die.
Your own body will eventually fall apart.
Everything that seems permanent is absolutely impermanent and will be smashed.
Experience will gradually, or not so gradually, strip away everything that it can strip away.
Waking up means facing this reality with open eyes and no longer turning away.
Right now, we stand on sacred and holy ground.
For that which will be lost has not yet been lost, and realising this is the key to unspeakable joy.
Whoever or whatever is in your life right now has not yet been taken away from you.
This may sound obvious but really knowing it is the key to everything, the why and how and wherefore of existence.
Impermanence has already rendered everything and everyone around you so deeply holy and significant and worthy of your heartbreaking gratitude.
Loss has already transfigured your life into an altar."
~ Jeff Foster ~