The yin-yang of life: love and death
Recently I pondered on the deaths that had occurred in my life.
At first glance, I could only think of my grandfather’s passing. The tears I shed, the people in attendance, the heat on my back. The red soil had never been more radiant.
But the more I looked back; I realised death had occurred countless times. And with it, the loves lost.
Love greets death
I was five when I went to my first funeral. A close friend of my mother’s, whose death had shocked us all. The morning she died; I saw my mother sat on her bed, weeping. It was the first time I had seen her cry and I did not understand.
As time went on, I later came to know the depth of their friendship. Her death carved a grave wound in my mother. One I was unsure would ever be healed. It was the intensity of her love which made the pain worse.
Death greets love
It left me questioning: if love is the yin, could death be the yang?
In death, the quantity of pain is not measured by time or age or circumstance.
But by love.
Love is what we leave behind and what we carry with us. As with death. One is not present without the other. It is the unspoken cycle of life. The people and things we love will eventually die but love does not travel with it.
Love transforms life
It is that which breathes life into a person or entity and at the end of its cycle, is a rebirth. Love is not destroyed but transformed. It is moulded to be the light that was once present. Such mutations should not be treated with disregard or abused but observed. There is beauty in loss that poses a challenge to us. One we cannot explain and sometimes cast aside.
In his book Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives, David Eagleman writes:
There are three deaths…The third is that moment, sometime in the future, when your name is spoken for the last time.
The third death is the last because of the love we still hold. It may not be forever present, but its focus is elsewhere, thriving. In my culture, funerals do not signify loss but a celebration of one’s life. Amongst loved ones and over food, we churn out stories and memories and legacies. Not of who has left us but of those who remain. The imprint one has on our lives continues to hold the love we have for them.
Yin and yang
There is a balance needed in life. Good vs. evil. Happiness vs. despair. Love vs. death. Neither are forms to be feared. We can only accept them as they are and for what they are so we can manoeuvre through our lives daily.
Not everything will make sense and that is okay. Not each death is a tragedy. It is a means of an emotional revolution. Not every love will benefit us. It may be there to indicate the cracks in an already fair painting. It is up to us to decipher which revolution to be a part of and which painting needs a new canvas.