At a distance, creeping along the horizon I heard a curious hum of the Cicada chorus steadily approach like a wave in the full belly of the sea. As the vibration grew closer it intensified like a like a flash flood breaking through the forest…the high pitched buzzing and unavoidable magnitude of their song echoed in the walls of my mind, eroding my own thoughts so that I could not think of anything other than the presence of their sound and I succumbed to this voice of the woods and I opened to it, feeling thousands of cries pierce me to the nerve of my bone. As I took it in with both reluctance and awe I closed my eyes and imagined that I was being swept away on a magical sound current into the swell of nature’s canopy. The reluctance faded and the amazement swallowed me, and just as I turned myself over to surrender in its awkward beauty, the cicada rhythms abruptly ceased, as if Creator turned them off with a flip of a switch. There was an eery, yet inviting silence, a temporary withholding of all sound. My mind remained hollow, my body quietly attuning to the emptiness of the forest, the creek, it seemed, stood mute in darkness. This silence, a gap in time not filled with anything other than the remarkable residue of cicada speak. The sound had died, but its impression was marked deep within me. As I sat with this metaphor, I felt a tear press itself out of the tender rim of my eye and channel its way down my somber face where it pooled in the corner of my lips, and as I tasted my own fear and grief, I had another conversation with Death.
The Chinese consider the cicada to be a symbol of death and rebirth. Our life is intense like the cicada song, waxing to great heights and eventually waning into a soft fade at the fold of the horizon, ending with quiet release and leaving a rich impression for the soul to be born again into, perhaps, another of nature’s song.
Death has a song too.
When I was diagnosed, I bought myself an enormous Katrina Doll (Frida Kahlo to be exact) representing Dia De Los Muertos, honoring those souls who have moved on and honoring the impermanence of all things. I put this fragile statue at the foot of my bed, and each day as lay stitched and wilted, I stared into her hollow eyes and awe-struck mouth. I counted her ribs and bones, traced my eyes along her skeleton frame, and watched, like raw art, a painful beauty emerge. Rather than resist or deny, I reached out to Death with curiosity and a will to listen to her story.
As you can imagine, this year has brought on a different kind of contemplation around the idea of death and the unavoidable vulnerability of impermanence. I’ve come to realize that my understanding of death could be weighted in negative assumptions about its purpose, and through shifting my perspective I have come to slightly better terms with its inevitability. I say slightly because there is still a strong ambivalence toward the possibility of premature dying that I am not yet able to resolve with absolute acceptance, for without a doubt, I am still determined to be here.
However, with legitimate consideration that my life might have been cut short with a sharp knife of cancer, I have found myself getting very close to Death, and her and I have had many conversations. I have struggled with ideas of religion and spirituality, suggestions that death is God’s will, or the will of science and nature. I dabble with my own personal interpretation, but the delivery that most resonates with me in this time and space is from the wisdom of native teachers and healers who perceive Death as a natural part of life, an honorary right of passage, a character in this mysterious and multidimensional story of the universe. I have been told from such aboriginal narratives that Death is a midwife who is with us from the first moment we are born, and is with us through every minute of our life. Death is not something waiting for us at the end of our predestined course, eager to judge, punish, or bring hurt. Rather, she is the shadow that helps define the light through every stage of our life. She is a misunderstood companion who acts as protector and usher on this plane of existence, and the next. This midwife, with our last breath, births us into the next dimension….or into the restful bed of Earth, or the liberated beauty of ash. Death does not kill us, the unfortunate circumstances of this world kill us. Death holds our hand as we leave. She separates us from the suffering in the body or mind and has the hard task of listening to the cries of the spirit within the dying, and it is she who makes her entrance of dark grace to free the tethered soul.
Whether in the song of the cicada, the Skelton of Frida, or the contemplative canyons of my soul, Death has a new place in my story. I share my life with her, I share my truth with her, and as I speak to her I trust and hope that she, too, will listen to my long life’s song.
Aho, Namaste, Blessings,
Robin Afinowich
Please know that my intention is not for you to prescribe to my process of wonder, but rather to initiate your own contemplation. This is my thought today, trying on a new perspective; tomorrow the story might take on a new form. I’m certainty willing to allow my ideas and beliefs change, expand, and emerge from new thought, awareness, or experience. Regardless, I am listening, and I am open….to all of it….to all of life….even these difficult conversations….
