Death (and beyond).

I don’t know if it’s only me or if other reincarnationists have the same interest, but I’m always thinking about death. It’s the greatest mystery of Humanity after all… and I’ve always loved mysteries. But when you make reincarnation the centre of your life, I guess that death deserves a place of honour too. All your thoughts change once you have remembered a few of them. And if someone asked me what’s the point in remembering past lives, I’d always say that’s one of the most important reasons: to lose the fear of dying, to understand that death is just a transition, that we’ve done it thousands of times… and we’ll keep doing it again and again, no matter what we believe.

Some people just don’t want to know though. They prefer to stick to their old fears and look elsewhere, rather than face it and look at death straight in the eye. And for me it’s quite frustrating, but I’m learning after a couple of years it’s not worth the effort to try and make them understand. Mysteries are there to be resolved without any help, and even when I’m dying to shout the solution, I just can’t do it. People have to find by themselves.

Anyway, I wish there was an easier way. Recently a distant member of my family has died. I’m not the only believer in reincarnation in my family, but I’m the only one with clear and validated past life memories. Death is death. Remembering… knowing reincarnation is a fact, doesn’t change the feeling of loss and sadness that goes hand in hand with death, but I guess it gives you a different perspective and an inner strength (which others might call coldness), that helps you a lot through the process and makes you understand that death is not something to fear, is not something inherently bad, is not the dark side of life, or a failure, or a disgrace. It’s as sacred as birth, or even more, as we’re returning to our real home, where there’s no more suffering and no more toil.

However... no matter what I believe, each person is going to live death according to their thoughts, feelings and beliefs. And those are not going to change in the last minutes or the last month, while you are getting ready for it. This person didn’t have a lot of time to get ready… but the worst of it all was that his closest relatives were not ready to let him go, so even when he had stated he didn’t want to take any more medicines, seeing the prognosis of his brain tumour was bad, they all insisted he must undergo chemotherapy and radiotherapy. And while they all were clinging to his life, he slipped away one evening in the way to the hospital… or maybe in a cold hospital room, after he began to feel bad. I wonder if it would have been better just to accept the moment was near, and let him die peacefully in his bed, surrounded by all of them, with time to say goodbye, with their image in his pupils, instead of strange faces and annoying beeps from cold machines as the only company. “It’s logical, you have to do all you can to keep him alive, so that you know you did all that was possible”. That’s the answer I’ve got a few times. Possible for what? To prolong an unwanted agony? To give a dying body one week, one month more of waiting, of useless fighting in a lost battle? For me it's an answer that only reflects our own desire to keep someone close to us, when they already have decided to part. An attempt to keep our conscience clean, forgetting it’s the other person’s wish what matters now. Did someone ask him what he wanted to do? Did they pay any heed to what he said? I’m afraid most of the times we just don’t listen. It’s understandable: the fear, the grief, the sudden separation, the confusion, the regrets for words left unsaid… they all are too much to bear. But it’s something we have to learn to do: to see death with different eyes, and recover the humanity we had in other times, when our gods were of a different kind and our beliefs in the afterlife (true or not) helped us act in a more caring way, with a greater awareness of the meaning of death… and the meaning of life.

I can’t say I’ll know how to do it right when it’s my turn… to die, or to witness death of people really close to me. But I have in my mind the memories of a number of deaths I don’t want to forget. The non-traumatic ones were all in my own bed, easy and peaceful (or at least that’s how I remember them), sometimes alone, sometimes with my most beloved partner… and I’m sure that’s what I want for this life. I don’t want to die in a hospital, forgotten or ignored behind some grey curtains, or plugged to a devilish machine that keeps my body alive while my soul just wants to be free and go on with new lives. It’s not fair. It’s not human. It’s… plain madness.