How might we accept impermanence with equanimity?
I remember feeling awed and terrified as a young child by the infinity of the universe… and the finiteness of death.
I still have an intense feeling of dread, whenever I allow myself to really think about it. Of existential terror.
After reading a book here, listening to a podcast there over the years, I decided that it was finally time to face it head on. I found the perfect opportunity with the start of a new Working Out Loud circle earlier this year, exploring week after week what death can teach us about living fully.
One of the exercises involves writing down 50 facts about yourself. I surprised myself – and my circle members even more – when I shared the fact that I had never been to a funeral. “Perhaps that explains my obsession with death”, I mused. “It’s theoretical.”
“Are you pregnant?”, the quarantine official asked as part of his health screening routine, as we arrived at the next mandatory checkpoint in the airport after having travelled halfway across the world.
“No”, my husband answered, taking my hand.
“Have you been hospitalised in the past 30 days?”
This time I replied.
“I was pregnant, then I wasn’t, and I went to hospital.”
A pause. A look of surprise. And then unfabricated sorrow.
“I’m so sorry.”
It was one of the most pure, empathetic and touching responses I’ve received since my pregnancy loss.
I’ve been ambivalent since childhood about having my own biological children. When we learnt together with my husband that it would be extremely unlikely, we decided to accept the situation, closing that door and opening another. So it took me a while to realise, and then to believe, that I might actually be pregnant. We were both overjoyed, and at the same time fully aware of the probability that this mini-version of us might not quite make it all the way.
After a first positive ultrasound, though, we started to hope. We kept reminding each other that the likelihood of a healthy birth was exceedingly low, but we started to dream that it wasn’t impossible.
The gynaecologist had asked us to come back for a second ultrasound one week later, just to be sure.
I knew as soon as I saw the image on the screen.
Death is no longer theoretical.
I’ve carried it inside me.
How might I accept one day, with equanimity, the impermanence of this new life that we created through our love?
By embracing the grief, along with the joy.
And by remembering.
PS: The title comes from this extraordinary work by The Bengsons. Thank you Meg.