February 22, 2021
The Inner Sense of Love

ON this day in 1998, my mother, Marge Taylor, passed away/died/transitioned and breathed her last.

My parents, Bob and Marge Taylor in their early days.
Carolyn, 1980s, photo by Jim M.

Today, my dear friend of over 40 years is surrounded, enclosed in the love of family and friends at the local hospital, preparing for her time. She breathed her last, peaceful breath at 4pm.

She and her husband were some of the first ones I met on arriving in Tasmania in November 1979. A year or two later I was best man at their wedding. A year or so later they gave me a home when I was homeless, then the next year he was my best man.

We didn’t stay as close throughout the following decades, but, true to the nature of real friendship, whenever we did meet up it was as if no time at all had passed, no judgement and no regrets.

This is not a eulogy for my mum or for Carolyn. It’s me pausing to ponder, ‘what do I know about life and death? What do I believe? And who am I, who are we anyway?’

 

What dissolves along with the body and what remains? And how can I prepare for the transition today, while being ignorant of the time when my ticket expires, and the last train leaves the station?

 

Here’s what I do know. I’m alive. I’m here. I’ll never be here now again, not in this body, with this name, this mind and history. That makes this time precious above all riches; a commodity that is so rare that it is unique, a one-off, a chance in a lifetime literally.

 

It’s quite possible that there are many lifetimes behind me and many more to come, that my higher self is aware of and coordinating nine incarnations at once, but I don’t know these things. ‘Love’, as Paul wrote, ‘believes all things, endures all things…’ and I do know love. And I do know that love connects us, protects us, and survives all struggles as light passes through darkness, shines into shadows and never knows they were there.

 

That love is like energy, something which cannot be created or destroyed, but which can only be changed from one form to another. In this body, viewing the world through these senses, we grab on to forms, to words, to labels and all too easily lose the inner sense (innocence) of love.

 

That’s what is changing though.

 

 

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