“Will I Die Too? Will You?”
About 2 weeks prior to October 9th, I read a really great article in the Shambhala Sun about a mom explaining death to her six year old son. His kindergarten teacher was dying of cancer and the son understood that she was sick. He heard other children saying she was “dying” and he felt confused. He knows that he has seen dead bugs, dead flowers etc and although the word is familiar and he’s “seen it”, he doesn’t understand what will become of his friend if she dies.
The mom decides to explain the life lesson carefully as it was their first discussion about death. This was more difficult for her because they were Buddhists. The 2 problems she runs into are these. Catholicism, Christianity and Judaism are readily abundant in school. In the United states, a majority of children fall into this category and bond over their common beliefs. Buddhism is not a widely discussed concept in the mainstream school system so the child felt more confused about what his friends were telling him versus what he had already learned at home.
The second problem was that there is not an over-abundance of Buddhist literature that goes deep into death. Death is actually simple…it’s just death. Most books only concentrate on the natural breakdown process to dying. In this religion there is more talk about the processes that happen as the body ceases life and the life lived up until that point. Generally, the only mention of afterlife is that your “doings” in this life will determine your next one. You won’t remember this one and that is why there is more importance on current life existence than there is on death. It doesn’t focus on the sadness of the loss and what it means to the living to experience the loss. At a Buddhist funeral they read a piece called “white ashes”. It explains that this is what we all become...nothing more nothing less. It has nothing to say about where you came from or where you will go. Technically you could go on to many realms…you can go to dozens of levels of heaven or hell (minus god or satan, same idea though), you can linger, be reborn as a human or animal etc. What happens to you after death is for your next life to worry about, not this one. This life is a stepping stone into the unknown. Your concern is to live this life with “right speech” and “right mind”.
Anyhow, I liked the article because it was the first Buddhist piece I had ever read regarding how you explain death to another person. The mother comes up with a wonderful explanation that touched upon how I have always felt about the death of someone else.
The son’s teacher is sick, he knows she is “dying” and a bird flies into the families window one day following his revelation of this situation, breaks it neck and dies in the yard. Of course this is traumatizing to him. Mom explains:
“Nothing really dies,” I told him. “It just turns into something else. Everything is always changing form. Do you remember the pumpkin that rotted into the earth in your garden? Tomatoes sprouted where it used to be. This bird will go back to the earth and turn into lavender flowers and butterflies.”
“When you die, will you turn into a flower?” he asked, looking a little worried. “Maybe,” I said, patting the earth down over the bird. He thought for a while, then asked, “But will the flower know that it used to be my Mommy?”
He’d gone right to the heart of the central koan, the question of the persistence of consciousness. This was what had always bothered me, too, about New-Agey stories that tried to gloss over the finality of death. After all, if you don’t remember that you used to be a shepherd in medieval England or a princess in ancient Egypt, what difference does it make? All I could say was what would come to be my mantra when it came to question the afterlife: “I don’t know.”
I re-read the article twice since Brian died. There is something in there somewhere that comforts me and helps me to maintain my faith in my belief. I take some solace in that it’s “just that simple”. I felt a little tried when Gabby asked us at the mass if Brian was in that box. My mom told her that indeed he was. “How will he breathe in there?” she asked. It bothered her. My mom explained to her (mid-mass) that he didn’t need to breathe anymore. On the list of things that weren’t helping, Katie yelling “who is that…is that Brian?”. Of course Gab needed to know why Brian didn’t need to breathe. My mom told her that God breathes for him and that he doesn’t need to breathe where he is. Of course Gab thought this meant Brian became a fish. My mom told her that only bri’s skin was in the box which I quickly corrected because I couldn’t imagine Gabs mental picture of that statement. I told her that Brian was everywhere now but only his body was in front of us for the moment. I think Gabby still thinks that you become a fish when you die but she partially gets it. | 