Reincarnation
Unexpectedly, her mind cleared. “Hi Sweetie,” she smiled, her eyes meeting mine in recognition.
“Would you like some water, Mom?” I asked. She nodded, but when I brought the glass with a straw to her mouth she was unable to coordinate her efforts and fell back onto the pillow, lapsing once more into a confused delirium.
My father called early the following morning. “I think we’ve lost her,” he said in a small voice. It was New Years day and the short drive across town to their home was free from obstacles. I realized that her two words to me were the last of her life.
As I sat with her mortal remains and struggled with my disbelief at her departure, a distant memory came to my mind. When I was a very young child, my older siblings went to school and my father went to work leaving me to the daily companionship of my mother who cheerfully performed the duties of a 1950’s housewife.
As she went from room to room cleaning and vacuuming, I would tag along, scooting myself on a toy metal train engine. One morning, in the back room of the house, the sunlight streamed through the eastern window highlighting dust particles floating in the air. As I sat upon my train and stared at the shaft of light, I fell into a kind of reverie. It was as if I were a golden particle floating in an ocean of light.
Eighty years is a respectable age, more than the vast majority of humans who were ever born. But still it seemed too short, I could not believe that she was gone.
Those who believe in life-after-death must surely realize that the part of themselves that lives on at the time of death did not begin at the time of conception or birth. That which is born, dies, and that part of oneself that is eternal was already so before birth.
As such, this is not your first lifetime. Bodies, like flowers, bloom, wilt, and die, necessitating a new body to continue one’s progress. The forward movement of life finds its culmination in the expansion of consciousness to infinitude, the merger of the individual with the cosmic.