Death—as overwhelming as the loss of a loved one and as unconscious as our next exhale—is a part of our shared human experience, yet it is something we have a difficult time facing. I avoided it quite nicely until grief around the death of my father snowballed into a mid-life loss of identities and culminated in a head-on crash with my own mortality through a cancer diagnosis. I was mired in melancholy with the question Is this it? swirling in my head.
While this was unfamiliar territory, my response was predictable: don’t think, march! For answers, I looked outside myself—a grief group, books about dying well, a psychiatrist, a Bible Study, and a Zen center. And as much as I resisted—and continue to resist—every one of them pushed me in the same direction—inward.
I picture my soul as an iridescent tear-drop shaped pearl ringed with little rays of light encased in a warm, golden glow. I think this image came from a painting of Jesus, dressed in red with a little “soul patch” over his heart, that hung outside my first-grade classroom. That’s around the time the forces that shape our lives—families, religious traditions, society—take hold and we start trying to fit in, get approval or simply survive. We adopt personas and abandon the curious, insightful, child-like spirit that is our soul force.
My ordered, surface-skimming life had dulled—as if the flames around my soul weren’t getting the oxygen they needed to stay lit. It turns out Is this it? was the first of many questions I needed to ask to understand the internal deadening I felt in the midst of a very vibrant life. It freed me to ask deeper questions: What animates my spirit? When do I feel most alive and what has to die to make room for it? How do I want to be remembered by the people I love the most? A willingness to examine and accept agency in our life is, I believe, the medicine of mortality.
Mortality reignited a sense of curiosity, wonder, and agency around how I show up for myself and others. I am trying—and failing daily—to surrender my illusion of control, to release the myth of arrival, and to lower my fists and open my arms in order to expose my soul, rather than bury it. Each time I’m brave enough to listen to my inner voice, I discover enlivening moments of light-heartedness and joy—as if some of those little soul lights have been turned back on.
Facing our impermanence is uncomfortable because it means we accept death as a part of life. It is also liberating. We get to decide, with intention, how to spend each moment of our limited time on earth—what a gift! It’s an invitation to discover how to be the light we are meant to be in the world.
Please join us to hear the transformative stories of people who have questioned, grappled with, and surrendered to the beauty and pain of mortality.
Karen McGee is a vestry member and is co-organizer along with David Ware of this year’s VOICES Lenten series.