Dust to Dust

In the last few months, four people I know well have been diagnosed with cancer, two of them terminal. I know we are all mortal, and the older I get the more real death becomes, but I still have it in my mind that I will live to 99 and go out quickly of a heart attack– no slow decline, endless pain or morphine fog for me. It’s part denial and part hoping for the best. In any case, when that day comes, I’d like to be able to say, “Okay, I’m ready. I did what I came here to do.” 

I have always said I want to die with no threads left hanging, no life work unfinished, as if I came in with an assignment and I have to have it done by a certain date. Maybe… My friend L wrote a beautiful poem about his inevitable passing called “Composting What Is.” I absolutely love that title. It means that in the dying process, we have the opportunity to break down our life experience into its most essential nutrients, and recycle them as compost for the next generations’ garden. 

In The Face Of Mortality, What Matters?

A very wise being once told me that what we do with our lives here on earth really matters, and at the very same time it doesn’t matter at all. I am a blip on an infinite screen, and yet I also have a presence here, a heart that wants to keep beating, lungs that are not ready to take their last breath. And I have a Phyllis-ness, that is wired to survive, and survive well. 

So while I am still here, it matters very much to me that there are millions of people not surviving well at all, millions suffering and dying from poverty, hatred, injustice and war all over the world. It matters to me that we have a planet that is as threatened with extinction as we are. And so, for me, it really matters what I do here, even though, in the blink of an eye, I too will be gone. 

The Potential Of Each Life

My friend L’s diagnosis hit me right between the eyes– that place where the juxtaposition of vibrant life and inevitable death feels so uncomfortably real. In that space I’m choosing that it really matters that I contribute to all that is life-giving and loving for as long as I can. 

I get it now. It’s not that there is an assignment I may or may not complete, no cosmic test to pass or fail. It is this: there is a potential in every seed, waiting for water, rich soil and light, to become the full blown, full grown expression of itself– whether it is an oak tree or a blade of grass. That same potential lies at the heart of every person. My particular seed has urged me to write. It wants me to tell you that you have that potential, too, that we are here to be stewards of each other’s gardens, and that whatever your seed longs to become is just as needed, just as precious, as everyone else’s.. 

Thank you, my dear friend L; you have composted your life well. 

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“On the path to peace, we will close the gap between Love and Politics” (America in Therapy)

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You can find me at www.phyllisleavitt.com 

phyllis@phyllisleavitt.com

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