Death, Life, Reunion

TUES., AUG. 8, 2000, 2:53 PM
OFFICE, PULLIAM

You talked, a short while ago, with your Pastor, Karen, about her sermon in which she offered some of the detail of her daughter Chrissy’s death. She told some of the feelings of her older daughter, feelings of not being loved as much as the sister whose human life was no more. In human societies the death of someone “special” may encourage the sharing of thoughts about life… as it was lived and how it can and will be lived now.

Any death can be important to some people (from many to but a few), but, for all but a few who are very well-known and important, most individual deaths are of no consequence for their continuing life. You can empathize with some of Karen’s personal story because you also experienced the death of a 17 year old offspring. But the conditions were quite different, and you don’t know how you’d feel if Peter had lingered unconscious for some days… or if he had lived but with severe brain damage. Life just would have been different for you and Lenore if Peter continued to live, in body, but only with special, expensive care. You are glad (even as this doesn’t sound “fatherly”) that you didn’t need to have such an experience.

You are struck, as you are almost each time you have to experience, vicariously, the death (usually unexpected) of someone you know or the death of someone close to you or to a friend, how the concerns that were addressed in the courses you developed and taught in your last years made it less than easy to express regrets, honestly. In one course you averred that death was a natural part of the life cycle, and life was to be lived fully and joyfully for… whatever the years you have. You never were a sharp critic of the medical care system in its often frantic attempts to sustain a life, even some quite past the prime. Yet when you encountered the cost of maintaining lives it was and has been difficult to approve of “do everything that’s necessary.”

But then came the Environment course, with its quite clear assertion that more and more humans, living longer and longer, would bring “illness” to the physical environment and, eventually, the “death” of the earth’s capacity to function with this increase. The more that is done to sustain human life, in high tech ways, the more difficult it will be for the earth and its capacities to sustain the balance of life. So, increasingly you are feeling that, to be true to these assertions that you made, as a professor, and still hold to be true, you must live the rest of he earth life that I have allotted you in as simple and low tech way as possible… and comfortable… and must not accept, as essential, recommended ways of “killing cancer cells.” Help your body, in dietary supplement ways, to hold the cancer off, but be little concerned with “KILLING IT!” in ways that are available.

But now… you are preparing for the reunion with members of Lenore’s wider family, a celebration of life, with focus on the 50 years that Joyce and Bob have been married. Symbolically, it will be unfortunate that Mabel, the “mother of the bride” will not be there, but she now lives a life that is most comfortable in having few “ups and downs,” even if an “up” might seem desirable… such as this one. That will leave your brother-in-law, Bob, as the oldest…and then you and Lenore. And your youngest grandson, named after your grandpa, John Isaac, may be the youngest.

The time in Durango will not be long… and you hope for no problems with your home here and with the animals… so you will have to be “careful” how you “use time.” Consider, again, My previous Teachings about what you should do and how you should be. Balance selected conversations with social interactions and just observations of the flow of life among “your relatives there.”

This shall be a live reunion of family members, but also consider that death, because it is just an “event” in eternal life, also heralds a reunion, with souls who you once knew as humans. Just as you may be surprised at who you relate to well in Durango this next week, so it can be a surprise when you “come across” and are greeted by… some you may not expect, particularly some from other lives, who will, once again, be familiar… even family.