Standing on top of a mountain…
I remember being a little girl and listening to all the amazing stories from my grandma’s friends who were travelers. Today, while standing on top of a mountain, I realized I have become the type of person that amazed me as a child.
I also feel the best way to honor the dead is to continue living your life, and doing the things you would be doing had they never passed. I thought about people who never see much past their front stoop. Today, the burning in my calves told me I was alive, and then I saw something that was breathtaking and dizzying as I looked down to the forest below.
View from the top of Mt. Si.
For once, my fear of heights didn’t bother me, and I thought about my friend Matt who passed earlier this week. I thought about the conversation we had when he got back from boot-camp, and I thought about my friends who were gathering down in Oregon today to celebrate his memory. For me, it made more sense to be out in the woods than to be around others who are mourning. I looked into the sky, and a smile crept across my face.
The formalities make me uncomfortable, I would’ve seen a lot of folks I hadn’t seen since high school, and the friend would have been the only thing we shared in common. Not that there weren’t a few I would have liked to see, but preferably under better circumstances.
When I die, I don’t want a funeral. I don’t want people to cry over the life I lost. I’d rather they take joy in knowing that I had lived every moment as though it were my last, that I loved my friends, and that most of my friends were closer than my blood. I want my ashes spread in the river so they can drift to the corners of the world, seeking out the nooks and crannies I missed along the way during my life.
I’m done being afraid to live, and I think I have been for awhile now. I want to see the rest of the world, and more things that amaze me.
“Because the world is so full of death and horror, I try again and again to console my heart and pick the flowers that grow in the midst of hell”
― Hermann Hesse, Narcissus and Goldmund
Dan and I really are Narcissus and Goldmund. I believe that was the last book I read all the way through back in 2004 or 2005. I don’t really read much these days, only halves of stories and short things…blogs of inspiration, and bits of wit I find entertaining…but full on, no picture, big books with many words…no not so much. I think if anyone had trouble understanding the way that Dan and I are together, that book would be a good place to start.
I’m pretty much done existing in the world I came from. I’ve found pure enjoyment by following my bliss, and a better understanding as to how I feel life should be. I know most would not agree with me, but things are shifting as they always do. Siddhartha was a good read too. Death is life and life is death. I love the dead no less than I love the living, and it all drifts in and out of the world so smoothly, even on the harshest of days.
There’s a lot of folks I miss greatly, so many I feel were plucked too soon, but we are here for as long as we need to be, filling our role in the never ending cycle of nature. No, do not cry when I die. Smile and laugh, and run through the trees, fill your tank and drive until you see something you’ve never seen before. Then do it again, and again, and again. Sing off key, and dance in the isle of the grocery store as you fill your cart with items you never wrote on the list. Throw a party for no reason other than to bring folks together and remind them that life is fun. Share a moment without guarding your heart, and do something completely irrational just for the sake of mixing it up a bit. Life is too short to let my death be a hardship on anyone. When you miss me, celebrate. Smile and live.