“The Knowing”
During Buddha’s time, there lived a woman named Kisa Gotami. She married young and gave birth to a son. One day, the baby fell sick and died soon after. Kisa Gotami loved her son greatly and refused to believe that her son was dead. She carried the body of her son around her village, asking if there was anyone who could bring her son back to life.
A village elder took pity on her and suggested to her to consult the Buddha. She immediately went to the Buddha’s residence and pleaded for him to bring her son back to life. “Kisa Gotami,” said the Buddha. “I have a way to bring your son back to life. But I need you to find me something. Bring me a mustard seed, but it must be taken from a house where no one residing in the house has ever lost a family member. Bring this seed back to me, and your son will come back to life.”
Having great faith in the Buddha’s promise, Kisa Gotami went from house to house, trying to find the mustard seed. At the first house, a young woman offered to give her some mustard seeds. But when Kisa Gotami asked if she had ever lost a family member to death, the young woman said her grandmother died a few months ago.
She kept moving from house to house but the answer was the same—every house had lost a family member to death. Kisa Gotami finally came to realize that there is no one in the world who had never lost a family member to death. She now understood that death is inevitable and a natural part of life.
Putting aside her grief, she buried her son in the forest. Shen then returned to the Buddha and became his follower.
Death is a tragedy that can leave us traumatized for a long time. Like Kisa, we wish to bring our loved ones back to life. It’s arduous to accept that we won’t see a lover, a good friend, or a family member ever again.We can’t change the truth of death, but perhaps there is a way to deal with it.
‘If you knew who walked besides us at ALL times you will NEVER experience fear , doubt or loneliness ever again’
How do I deal with it ? I deal with it with a knowing. I’m often asked at my live events how I know something. My answer is simple and blunt.
“ I Know “……..” I know my loved ones walk with me , I know the butterfly that crossed my path this morning was my mum , I know the ladybird on the sofa last night was my brother, I know the person I am speaking to is your loved one in heaven,….. I never think it’s something , I simply know”
I have a knowing that we are infinite beings and that death is not final , there is more than we can ever know out there beyond this world. I know there is no such thing as coincidence in this life and we are ALWAYS in the right place at the right time. Everything is perfect and just how it is meant to be !
Definition of knowing in English:
knowing
ADJECTIVE
1 Showing or suggesting that one has knowledge or awareness that is secret or known to only a few people. ‘a knowing smile’
Grief is a horrible journey and is unique and can not be timed or hurried. I do feel however that if we all knew who was with us at all times our journey through grief can be altered and perhaps death can be viewed in a totally different way. Just a simple knowledge can mean so much and a new perspective can be gained with such joy. Joy in finding the signs and waiting for our loved ones to connect with us , joy in finding how they communicate with us and then allowing us to communicate right back. I realise for some of you reading this it may seem complex and unfathomable at this time in your grief. Give it time and let the knowing become you
I will leave you with this quote and from today simply Know
“ come to know something that cannot be destroyed by death”
And I wish to share this with you …….. by Alex Lickerman
https://tinybuddha.com/blog/navigating-loss-dealing-with-the-pain/
It isn’t what happens to us that causes us to suffer; it’s what we say to ourselves about what happens.” ~Pema Chodron
I remember when I first read the pathology report on my patient, Mr. Jackson (name changed), my stomach flip-flopped. “Adenocarncinoma of the pancreas,” it said.
A week later, a CT scan revealed the cancer had already spread to his liver. Two months after that, following six rounds of chemotherapy, around-the-clock morphine for pain, a deep vein thrombosis, and pneumococcal pneumonia, he was dead.
His wife called me to tell me he’d died at home. I told her how much I’d enjoyed taking care of him, and we shared some of our memories of him. At the end of the conversation I expressed my sympathies for her loss, as I always do in these situations.
There was a brief pause. “It just happened so fast…” she said then and sniffled, her voice breaking, and I realized she’d been crying during our entire conversation. “I’m so sorry for your loss,” I told her again. She thanked me for caring for her husband and hung up.
I’d known Mr. and Mrs. Jackson for almost seven years and had always liked them both immensely. I thought the world a poorer place without Mr. Jackson in it and found myself wishing I’d done a better job of consoling his wife, thinking my attempts had been awkward and ineffective. I reflected on several things I wished I’d said when I’d had her on the phone and considered calling her back up to say them.
But then instead I wrote her a letter.
Navigating Loss
Dear Mrs. Jackson,
When you called me to tell me your husband had passed away and how hard a time you were having, I found myself, frankly, at a loss. Conventional wisdom about how to console people who’ve suffered grievous losses includes platitudes like “be there for them,” “listen,” and “let them know you care”—all valid and useful guidelines that I’m sure have brought comfort to many suffering people.
But inevitably conversations end, people go home to resume their normal lives, and the wife or husband or son or daughter is left alone with pain now occupying the space their loved one used to be. Though I don’t know how comforting you’ll find this letter, I wanted to share with you some of my thoughts about grief in hopes of making your journey through it somewhat more bearable.
Why do we suffer when we lose those we love? I think the true answer is because we believe we can’t be happy without them.
Knowing how much you loved your husband, I can only imagine how strongly you must feel this to be true. And yet I often think the only reason the pain of loss abates at all is that we do become convinced we can be happy again—just slowly and unevenly.
Certainly, some people find themselves stuck in grief, unable to move on. Sometimes this happens because we actually become reluctant to surrender our grief even after it’s run its proper course, believing the pain of loss is the only thing keeping us connected to our loved one, or that to feel happy again would be to diminish the significance of the relationship we once enjoyed.
But neither is true. Even when people we love die, our relationships with them do not. We continue to have feelings about them, memories of things they did, imaginings of things they might say were they with us now. Just because the pain of losing them diminishes with time, their importance to us need not.
Normal grief is like a roller coaster: there are ups and downs, moments of pain intermixed with relief.
If, however, after the first six months or so there seem to be fewer periods of relief rather than more, normal grief may have changed into full-blown depression. If you think this might be happening at any point, please let me know. I can help.
Everyone grieves differently. Don’t ever let anyone tell you how to do it. If you want to talk about your husband with others, do. If not, don’t. There’s definitely something mysterious about the human psyche—some intrinsic force within us that continually seeks to engulf pain and suffering the way our white blood cells engulf viruses and bacteria.
It’s an elixir we seem to swallow at the very moment our loss occurs that immediately begins to work on our suffering without us even knowing it but which nevertheless somehow eventually cures us of it.
After experiencing a devastating loss, if you’ve allowed yourself to feel the legitimate pain it’s brought and not sought to avoid feeling it, things slowly start to improve. We wake one morning to find there’s something in the day we’re actually looking forward to; or someone says something funny and we actually laugh; or we find ourselves able to plan things again, even if only a trip to the grocery store.
But there’s no definite timetable for this. Don’t allow anyone to hurry you along with their expectations about when your grief should end. Just know that it will.
It may seem to you now, while in the middle of the worst of it, that it won’t, that your happier self was only a dream and that this grieving self is here to stay for good. But that’s an illusion brought about only by your current life-condition. Nothing is forever, including the pain of loss.
Don’t grieve alone. I worry that you have no one with whom to share your grief (you’ve told me in the past how you were all alone except for your husband). While you may not have much energy for this, I find myself hoping you’ll join a support group, either at your church or by looking online.
There’s something often magically healing about spending time with others who’ve had or are having painful experiences similar to your own.
It may seem an overwhelming prospect now, utterly beyond you, but often by holding someone else’s hand, by becoming their support, you’ll find your own pain lessens just a little bit.
When you shine a light to guide others on a dark road, your own way is also lit.
Forgive yourself your failures. You said on the phone you “felt guilty,” but not what you felt guilty about. I wondered about that.
I wondered if you felt guilty about having spent time doing things like seeing other people or watching television rather than spending every moment with him; or about feeling tired of caring for him; or about not always having a positive attitude when you were around him; or for wishing the nightmare of his illness had actually ended sooner—or any of a myriad of things family members have told me have made them feel guilty, too.
Or maybe you feel guilt about the decisions you made when your husband was no longer capable of making them himself.
The end of a person’s life is often composed of gut-wrenching choices that land squarely on the shoulders of family members: to put in a feeding tube or not; to use mechanical ventilation or not; to use heroic measures or not; to decide not to press forward with an intent to cure but rather with the intent to palliate.
I know you struggled mightily with the decision to stop treatment and bring him home to be comfortable, but you must know your decision did not cause his death. His disease did. His disease is what thrust you into a situation you didn’t ask for or want, but accepted with grace, making every decision with as much deliberation and wisdom as you could muster, even when you were exhausted, and always with an eye towards his comfort.
Forgive my presumption, but if you feel guilt over any of these things—or over other things I didn’t mention—you must forgive yourself.
There was never a need for you to be a perfect caregiver—only a caregiver who cared, and that you most certainly were. The person who gets sick is never the only one whose life is deeply affected by their illness. This was your experience, too.
I want you to know that watching the way you were with your husband always inspired me. I can only hope to face losses in my life with as much courage, acceptance, and humor as you and your husband did both.
While no one knows what happens when we die, we can say with certainty that we lie between two equally inconceivable possibilities, one of which must be true: either the universe has always existed and time has no beginning, or something was created from nothing.
Love Paula