I’m on page 1443 of an Outlander series book, and it’s the last page! I want it to go on. While reading I enter my book and live within it. How can it end? But it does. In India, where I live, there are, among other Gods, these three: Brahma, Vishnu, and Mahesh. They represent the Creator, the Sustainer, and the Destroyer. In this culture I have become more aware of their meanings and applied my awareness to parts of my past.
I grew up in New England, in the northeast part of the United States, where four seasons clearly defined the cycle of each year: small yellow, blue, or white crocus close to the ground in spring; fat, round heads of dark pink peonies with hundreds of petals in a row in summer; bittersweet, with its red berries in their yellow jackets in a wild climb over the stone wall in fall; and in winter, a gray sky stabbed by stark, bare, branches of maple and oak trees. Then, I didn’t think of three stages of birth, life, and death. I picked flowers, raked leaves, and shoveled snow, banking the trees, as separate from a greater destiny.
After my second husband was cremated—a clearly unchangeable ending—I held his box of warm ashes against my chest in cool October, surprised and grateful for the heat. He was born in Maryland, a state at the northernmost boundary of the south and lived happily in New Mexico, in desert and high hill country. And now, in final form, he would be sprinkled over favorite places. By grace I accepted all was as it should be.
My realization is, “We are born, spirit into a body. We live until our body joins the earth—and spirit again is our only form. We are given experiences to know the truth of beginnings, middles, and ends on our life journey.