Crumpet, you are a beautiful writer!
For me coming to terms with death has taken me through many stages. The first stage, believing that I was to die some horrible death because I was no longer a believer in what I was taught, just going through the days of life a workaholic but virtually lifeless because there was no hope.
The next stage was a process, I fell in love with my daughters father, I learned to feel, and see the world around me, and started to embrace all the beautiful things in life I had not seen before. The more I embraced life, the impending doom of death slowly disapeared.
The next stage sprang upon me again when my partner talked of having children, starting a family. Again the nagging thoughts of my mortality consumed my mind, I found my mind returning to my old way of thinking. How could I plan to bring a child into this world when there was only death before me. I pondered this thought for quite awhile, agonizing over the desire to have a child, and agonized over the old indoctrinated teachings of doom and death I had believed in.
During that stage after much thinking, I realized that I was still allowing old thoughts and beliefs that I truly had no belief in control me. This angered me, and from that anger I took back my life once again and planned the conception of my child. The planning of having a child was the biggest turning point in my life in coming to terms with my mortality, and the most beautiful experience in knowning that life was meant to live, feeling life within me, and visualizing a long future ahead. I realized that someday I would leave this earth like any other living being, but no longer lived in fear of impending doom. For a long time I embraced this life, raising my daughter, imagining grandchildren one day long ahead in my future.
Then came another stage, it was the death of my brother. All of a sudden again, those old thoughts returned, where is he, where did he go. I agonized over it, wishing I believed in something. Wishing I believed in a heaven, wishing that perhaps there was a resurection, perhaps reincarnation, thinking to myself has god punished him, is he suffering, or is he at peace. I was in such turmoil in my mind, thinking, what is death, is there a god, would god make him suffer.
I took off for a day alone, riding my bike along the yukon river, I sat, thought, cried, agonized. It was on this day that I came to a feeling of peace, I sat by the river thinking about who my brother was, what a lovely person he was, and knew at that moment in my heart and soul that he was at peace. I felt peace come over myself sitting there that day, it no longer mattered that I had no definite belief in anything. I intuitively knew that since he was a good person, that if there was a god, god would know this. If there was a place we go to after death, wherever he was, it was a good place. I believed in nothing, but had faith in the goodness of the universe to treat him well, wherever he was.
From that time on, I have had peace in my soul regarding death and my own mortality. I have faith that whatever becomes of us at death is no longer something to fear, I do not know where I will go, nor does it matter. I simply know, that I am a good person, I will be at peace, and that the universe will take care of me, so I no longer worry about death. I believe this to be so for all.
