An Epilogue for Todd … Bringing him back to the Big Island (04/19/14)
“Despite the medical norms and legal imperatives
that attempt to give death a specific date and an exact hour,
it is a gradual process … not a singular event.”
~ inspired by James W. Green
I took a little trip a few weeks ago, a most important Journey that proved to be quite remarkable — a Journey filled with emotion & wonderment & insight — a Journey I am ready to share with each of you now …
It has been almost two years since my family learned of the passing of my dear brother, Todd … and it has been roughly three years since his actual death. For those of you already privy to this news, I will spare repeating the specific details of the event … No, as far as this post and the few that will follow are concerned, it is enough to know that I received a small portion of Todd’s ashes back in the Fall of 2012, and that I had been keeping them safe since then; safe & honored until they could be returned to the place I felt Todd loved above all others: the wild & wonder-filled Big Island of Hawaii.
I was prepared to wait quite awhile for this trip to materialize (Hawaii is, after all, quite a ways away from Germany), and yet to my most pleasant surprise I didn’t have to wait long at all. Indeed, thanks in very large part to my dear Friend, Vanessa (who had also known Todd before his death) — we were able this past April to not only lay the last bit of my brother to rest, but were also able to document the doing so thereof.
Admittedly, the pictures made of the memorials we held for Todd while in Hawaii were originally intended to be shared solely with his parents, immediate relatives and closest friends, and yet they proved to be so Beauty-full and so profound that I have decided to share them with all of you as well.
After all, there can be no real “tragedy” in death if we use our recallings of a departed Love to inspire in our own lives heretofore unknown heights of Peace & Meaning & Joy …
After all, there can be no life truly “wasted” if we choose to cradle its warmer memories next to our hearts each morning, and then choose to carry them gently with us into each new day’s dawn.
Amen … Let it be so.
“If someone is tired and has gone to lie down,
we do not pursue him with grief and tears.
He whom I have lost has but lain down to sleep
for a while in the Great Room.
To break in upon his rest with the calamity of lamentation
would but show that I knew nothing of nature’s Great Law …
… This is why I cease to mourn.”
~ Chuang Tzu
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