Monday 26 December 2005   Death I have suffered a lot of deaths over the last few months. Over this fall. People. Relationships. Hot water heaters. When people die, it's a relatively strightforward thing for most of us to accept. No going back. No hanging around, hoping the dear departed's condition will change and things will get back to normal. Nope. Dead is dead. Hold the funeral. Move on with your life. But relationships and hot water heaters... I knew the hot water heater was on its way out for a long, long time. Last winter was the beginning of the end. It began by making strange noises, then it progressed to belching smoke at unpredictable intervals. The repairman would come to check it out, but he couldn't ever quite figure out exactly what was wrong. So he'd do some "tuning" on it, clean this and that, and, for a while, everything would seem to be fine... Relationships are a lot like hot water heaters, I think. You get to the point where you have to acknowledge that there is a problem, but unless there's an explosion or flood or some catastrophic occurence, you don't want to believe it's serious. Even if serious seeming symptoms occur, you figure it was just an annomaly— and fixable. So you set to about making repairs, do a little "tuning," clean things up a bit, and... things work okay again. For a while. But after another while, you realize you don't know what will break next, or when, only that it will. Eventually you begin to lament the frequency of the repair bills more than the fees— but you think it's still cheaper than buying a new hot water heater. Inevitably, however, in the fullness of time, the end comes. One way or another, with a whimper or with a bang, suddenly— and yet not unexpectedly— the end comes. Yet you refuse to recognize death when you see it. You still hope. Full of hope, you think, This can be fixed! All we need do is replace the broken parts (again) and all will be well. And so, like a Dr. Frankenstein, you continue to replace essential parts, shock them into a semblance of life... Relationships and hot water heaters are exactly like people in this regard: like it or not, once they're dead, they're dead, and they should be left so, in peace. Hold the funeral. Move on. But if you can't accept that, things get very messy. If you try to resuscitate people or relationships or hot water heaters with replacement parts, you'll find yourself with a miserable, unhappy monster on your hands. And if you try to raise them from the grave like vampires, they will turn on you and suck the very life out of you. And that is a pity. For it means a torturous nightmare for the poor monster of your creation, or having to call in von Helsing to have the undead thing staked and decapitated and burned. Whatever the case, it's a very costly and very messy clean up process. Death touches us all. Sooner or later, friends, relationships, hot water heaters, they all die. When death comes, accept the death with what grace you can muster. For death is not death, but a new beginning, a birth into a new life— It's difficult to accept these changes. Because we know there will be pain. With death there is the pain of grief; and with birth there is the pain of passage. Sometimes the pain of grief and birth compounded seems almost unbearable, but it must be borne, for only by suffering through it will you be reborn. Accept the pain and go with it, let it transport you and transform you... And you will emerge from pain into a new life. Live life fully, and do not fear its inevitable end, nor any of the other deaths that will touch your life, for death is part of life, and there is always a new beginning— So just suck it up and buy a new hot water heater, you cheap-ass bastard! Addenda: The shadows are long, the pale sun is in my eyes even at noon. The year is drawing to a close... and yet the fall is only part of a circle, not an end; it's only itself, taking its place in its time... Are we, our incarnate lives, part of a circle of existence? Is this embodiment of spirit only one phase of a cycle that repeats infinitely? Do we continue, changing like seasons, only knowing— aware of the season in which we presently live? It would be nice to think so. — One Way: A Tajiquan Journal November 2005 When the end of earth-life comes, let us not think that we have reached the twilight, or that for the last time the golden sky is fading in the West. Let us not think that night has come, but that a grander sunrise awaits us beyond the grave. We must meet death as we meet sleep, knowing that the morning follows the night. Thus we should enter the dawn called Death... Death is but the name given to the door through which we enter to reach another phase of our existence. What appears a dream between the shores of birth and death is a great reality, and though we seem to stand upon the verge of crumbling time, to love, to hope and disappear, yet it is the greatest of life's many certainties that each individual life will never die, because each one of us is part of the Divine Mind. — J. A. Findlay It's Called a Breakup Because It's Broken By Greg Behrendt and Amiira Ruotola-Behrendt Chapter One AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH! F*#k, it hurts. It's rocking the very core of your being. You never saw it coming. You knew this was going to happen. You were going to do it first. You only broke it off with him before he broke it off with you. You guys were supposed to be together forever. You never liked him that much anyway. He was such a great kisser. The sex wasn't that great. You really liked his family. He hated your friends. You hated his shoes. You miss him soooooo much. There's no doubt about it-breakups suck. And now here you are holding this stupid "Breakup Book" because, quite honestly, you'd do anything not to feel like this and maybe this book will shed some light on what you're going through. Maybe you'll get some sleep tonight. Or stop sleeping all the time... First Chapter of this book from the Washington Post. Copyright © 2005 New Moon