30 Days in the Bardo...

My dad died 30 days ago, today.  I woke at 2:22 this morning, exactly 30 days after he died.  Weird.  I just laid in bed and talked to him...

How are you doing Dad?

How is your time in the Bardo?

Did you find Marylou?  I picture the two of you walking around, talking and laughing.  I hope it feels like that.

We miss you.  It is so weird to still be in this life without you.  You were always here.  Life is so altered now that you are gone.

Mom is doing ok.  She is grieving, and misses you.  But she is doing well, all things considered.  We went to this meditation about the Bardo yesterday.  It was lovely.  Lots of things changing in our lives right now...I mean, not as much as you!  Haha, you win the prize for biggest life change.  Ok, maybe that joke is in poor taste...I think you would find it funny also, though.

Anyway, I pray you are enjoying your time in the Bardo and that all the things you found vexing and troubling in this life, are finding a way to clarify and be released.  Not sure what comes next, but I am sure you will figure that out.  I don’t think I can wrap my head around there being nothing next...

Enjoy the 19 days you have left in the Bardo...I think about you all the time, I miss you all the time and I love you.

It was a nice, albeit a very one sided conversation.  I like to think I felt his presence.  But I also know that sometimes we just create the reality we want.  Still very odd that I would wake up at exactly 2:22, exactly 30 days later.

In Buddhist tradition, after you die you spend 49 days in the Bardo.  Not sure why that amount of time, I am not clear that anyone really knows...I suppose I should google that, but I just don’t really feel like it.  I think there is value in just accepting that it is 49 days and that is just the way it is.  I don’t need to understand it or approve it...it just is 49 days.

My mom and I went to this meditation, sound bath about the Bardo yesterday.  While it was somewhat related to the 49 days in the Bardo, it was also using Bardo to mean a time in between.  And it seems like this is where we are in the world right now...a great time in between...

Sanity and insanity

Life and death

Employed and unemployment

Love and grief

Loss and gain

Things we understand and things we just do not

Acceptance and intolerance

Love and disgust

Government sponsored murder and rule of law

Light and dark

It all feels heavy this morning.  And I feel the loss of my dad acutely.

Last evening I attended a lovely wedding celebrating the love of two people who are quite remarkable.  There was so much joy, happiness, recovery and love.  So much.  We laughed, we danced, we ate and we had such a good time celebrating the union of these two beautiful souls.  I was so grateful to be there, to be invited, to get to witness the blessed union, I need to still believe that loves prevails what with all the death and destruction that resides on all our screens and in our lives...

I feel my own time in the Bardo of in between.  Between the life I had with my dad and the one that I now have without him.  I have so much that is changing in my life, so very much.  And it is all ok, painful, but ok.  And I feel lucky to have the people in my life I do today and to sit every morning with others who want love and peace to prevail in this world.  And to go yesterday to a beautiful place and grieve and come to know this Bardo place better.

It has been an interesting 30 days.  I pray my dad is doing well.  I pray Marylou is doing well.  I pray they are happy, joyous and free from the pains of living.  I pray they are learning all they were supposed to with this life just lived and that they are happy to be subsumed back into the ethos and atmosphere, allowing their individual knowledge to advance our collective understanding with their passing. Two parts returned to a universal whole...

I feel calm today, a little sad and scared but calm.  There is no panic, because I know what to do...breathe in and out, try to help someone else and trust that everything is occurring as it supposed to, even if I do not like it or understand it.

Again, still...