you never know where it comes from

Beautiful day, I did some yoga in the backyard, true sun salutations - salute to the east, rays on my face when I went into upward dog... the canopy of trees overhead in triangle pose.  I love my backyard.

hopped on the bike early, a trip through Trinity-Bellwoods to pick up a cinnamon and brown sugar croissant at Clafouti, and then flipping through the Globe at the Dark Horse.  I'm going to take the picture now of what leapt out and made me cry.

Son, adventurer, life saver.

I'm barely controlling myself now.  That face, those words.  OK, tears now.

That sweet sweet face, and to think of his beautiful life snuffed out--  the pain his family must feel, and how immediately I go to what would happen to me if that had been my girl.

but to know that your child, at 16 months, was an adventurer. And to know, completely know, that he was a life saver... I haven't even read the obit, but I know my girl saved my life.  

And so, how does the death of an individual give meaning to life?  If contemplating death makes one realize the value in life is now, can only be now... but that's the Big Void, the EveryNothing.  A little boy dies.  A child you love dies.  All there is is pain.  Can you bring gratitude to your life after that? "Death" is easy.  Someone you love, dying, is something else again.

What I said yesterday

I think about death and what it can give you - an awareness of life.  Attention.  To have no more fear is to look at death every day and face the void and its certainty - and then to turn to your life with a sense of joy and possibility.  To look at the richness of the day. Death gives meaning - not god.

I still think - and I'm feeling all this stuff out - that Death in the abstract does all that.  Death that's reached over and rattled you-- torn you to pieces-- it would be so easy to go to a place of meaninglessness.

I'm going to try to read the obit now.

A head trauma killed him.  He never regained consciousness.  He became an organ donor at 16 months of age.  His father wrote the obituary, and says, "He taught others never to take a precious moment of family time - however mundane - for granted, and not to delay opportunities to visit friends both far and near."