Melissa from 1991
This past Sunday was my sister, Melissa’s, birthday. If she were still alive, she’d have turned 54. Only she died 12 years ago from metastasized breast cancer.
I still miss her every day, although as the number of years stretch away from her death, it grows easier. Less sorrow and more smiling in happy remembrance.
This year on her birthday something special happened. My grandson was born!
His arrival will never fully take away the loss of my sister, but it has brought so much joy and love into our family.
It isn’t that he fills a void per se, but it does feel as though the circle has been completed. A circle I didn’t even know felt incomplete.
His timing was impeccable in another way, too.
He was born on the new moon in Libra, a time just after the equinox, as we fully head into fall. All around us nature is beginning her transformation. Leaves are changing color, furry animals are busy fattening up or storing food for the winter, birds are migrating to greener pastures.
And I’m struck with this idea of death and renewal.
In our society, we avoid talking about death. It’s as if we view it as the enemy, something to be avoided at all costs. But what if instead, we saw it as part of the natural cycle of life?
When I look out at our garden, that’s what I see. The wilting plant stalks, and the refuse of our lives- the eggshells, melon rinds, moldy basil, used paper towels, and cardboard- that miraculously get transformed over the winter into nutrient rich soil. Soil that both renews the land and feeds the seedlings of our next season.
In a sense, that is what my grandson represents to me, too. He’s the link in the circle. Melissa is no longer in form, but she has made way, and in one sense, gifted us with new life.
The invitation of this moment is asking us to hold the old and the new, the end and the beginning, life and death.
Perhaps I’m feeling more sentimental just now. My heart is certainly overflowing with love. But I, too, am a libra, and it is my nature to hold both sides…
At the birth, which I was blessed to attend, I had a moment of remembrance, that being present at births and deaths, these sacred times, are thresholds. Thresholds when the veil between worlds or realities is thinner. The last one I attended was when Melissa left her body.
While my daughter was resting from pushing her son into the world, I closed my eyes, and acknowledged that I was participating in this threshold experience. I inhaled my gratitude to be witnessing this miracle, and felt into the expansiveness of that space. As I did, I also took a moment to honor my sister. I felt her presence with us in the delivery room, felt her gracing my daughter with love, felt her energetically guide the baby ever so gently into our family, into the love that permeates everything.
The circle is complete.
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