The light of the eternal soul

Saturday would’ve been my parents 55th wedding anniversary. Dad died just four months shy of this occasion. It was an odd day. Do I acknowledge it? Do I wish my mum happy anniversary? Do I write something like I always have?

I guess it was the first of those monumental moments, the key markers of the year after losing someone, a reminder of how much these moments can change by the absence of that one person.

Does that anniversary date stand anymore? If one of the partners to it is no longer alive does it turn null and void?

Last week Mum had to go and change some financial papers over. She shared with me afterwards, “It’s like he never existed”. The paper trail of him is becoming non-existent.

All the ways we know of him as an earthly being are starting to be erased. His clothes, his possessions, things he touched still remain, but the physical body that fit within them and around them, doesn’t. Ditto with the wedding anniversary, it still exists, but one of the halves doesn’t.

The memory of him will never leave, but his footprints are beginning to fade, like when the sea washes over the footsteps on sand. The imprint will always exist in the sand but it’s no longer visible, and no new ones can be created.

I still acknowledge and honour each of my grandparents birthdays, as I do their death dates. Their entrance in and out of this place we call planet earth. And now I will do the same with Dad. But what to do with an anniversary?

I’ve mulled over it for a few days and I feel like I’ve come to the position that it is the date rather than the years that now becomes the main factor. The anniversary still represents a commitment they made to one another, a bond they established and a contract they entered. A life streamed out of that commitment, a life that delivered the fruit of both my brother and myself. 54 years and eight months of memories, shared experiences, lived experiences.

My parents took their vows seriously. They didn’t have a perfect relationship, but neither do any of us have perfect lives (despite what social media sometimes tends to portray). Their relationship was that of two humans sharing the dance of life together. Sometimes they danced well as a team, other times they were following different steps and collided. But they never gave up, they continued to dance as a team till the final day, final moment. Mum was rubbing Dad’s back in the few minutes before he died. Right next to him, where she’d always been.

In the Jewish tradition, the annual death anniversary is called a ‘Yahrzeit’ and it’s marked by lighting a candle for 24 hours. The candle represents the eternal soul of the person. It is a reminder of the spiritual connection that transcends physical life.

As I was pondering this piece, it struck me that there may be a link between this and the candles we light on our birthdays. Perhaps we too are celebrating our soul and our eternity versus our years on earth. And the number of candles symbolises the years we are separate from our oneness. When we finally light the one candle for the deceased, it reminds us that they are now reunited with oneness. We now just need a single candle, forever.

I have a lot of these thoughts at the moment. My mind is constantly traveling to this idea of eternity. I guess it makes sense as I’m trying to find new meaning to a life that has been disrupted. I’m a firm believer in Socrates saying: ‘The unexamined life is not worth living’. More than a believer, it’s probably my motto for life — and this Substack. I’m a deep diver, it’s the shallows not the depths that frightens me.

A therapist shared with me that the immediate time after the death of a loved one involves a rewiring of our brain. The way we see the world around us has changed and our brain needs to adapt. I’m so glad my natural instinct as a writer prompted me to record this time as I can actually see the changes occurring in my understanding of life and death, separateness and oneness, body and soul, tangible and non-tangible.

One particular portal that has opened up for me is in a tea ceremony I participate in each week.

Something really profound happens in that room. So much so that I now take a journal and write down every word that surfaces. My tears mix with the tea and stain the pages of my journal. It is like a conversation with God/the universe/the divine, and Dad is the channel. We talk like we never could on earth, it’s what I call a wound-free chat. We are both unbound and unburdened. The scenes are like a movie, they shift quickly and aren’t necessarily linear, but they always make sense to our unique relationship.

I’m starting to see these encounters at tea as a bridge between two worlds — not only the physical and the eternal worlds, but my world before Dad and my world after Dad. It’s a way for me to sit in the unknown, the mystery, to build a link between the past and the future. And the ceremony of tea provides a way to enter this space. Socrates also said: ‘To fear death is nothing other than to think oneself wise when one is not; for it is to think one knows what one does not know’.

So that’s what I decided to do on their anniversary, I went to tea. It was my way of acknowledging this liminal unknown space. Where there was an anniversary and there wasn’t. I’ve also decided that each year now I’m going to light a candle on this date. A candle that represents the eternal nature of their partnership, their soul partnership, that will transcend this life and others. It doesn’t need roses or fancy dinners, it just needs a remembrance of what it means to live and love as one.