Death, taxes and glasses

All the sure things

I should be doing my taxes, and cleaning out the shed, etc. But today on my nine-miler (the training’s getting real) I ran by a beautiful cemetery and a group of mourners and I want—forgive me—to hang out there for a second.

The line of mourners’ cars snaked around the grounds, lining all the paved parts of the cemetery as I ran by its perimeter. Vehicles of every kind were parked bumper to bumper without room for a single other car. A lady in a white sweatshirt with short, puffy hair was attempting, with some difficulty, to climb into her big black truck, but mostly the crowd still congregated under the makeshift tent. Some couples held their arms around each other, with heads tucked onto partners’ shoulders. Some stood alone with arms crossed tightly in front of them. The crowd wore predominantly black, as expected, but there were a few smart blues, and then this woman in casual white. I couldn’t know why she was leaving early, my run carrying me forward beyond the storyline. She had not seemed upset, but she wore glasses, and one never can tell what’s going on beneath those. 

I myself wear glasses now. I am a glasses wearer. This is the first telltale and irrefutable sign in my life of my own mortality, and I wear them like an alter ego. They are screen glasses, and every morning when I go to work I scrub the glass with my pink glasses-specific hanky then push them delicately up my nose. I am a new person. But the degradation of my eyes is ever-chasing me—or ever in front of me. It is me, they are me, I suppose, and treating the glasses as if they belong to someone else is just part of my charade.

What struck me most of all at this funeral was the size of the crowd. It was noticeably large. I ran along H.E. Thomas and the crowd went on and on without diminishing. Who was being buried, I wanted to know. What did they do in their life, what community did they belong to, that such a crowd could be drawn when they weren’t even there? The size of the crowd seemed to express the size of the loss. Not that a large funeral crowd is the goal, but I’m not sure yet how to live a life like that. One that impacts so broadly and deeply. The display of connection and loss stood out to me as an uncommon sight and it made me sad for our mostly isolated modern lives. To live in communion with others is to choose to live differently, for the most part, and different is always harder, and harder always means fewer people do it. To take the Sunrail. To gather for dinner. To let people come over. To be vulnerable and not worry about the Christmas tree only half-put-away. To choose the uncertainty of others over the comfort of self.

Yesterday we drove to a friend’s house across Orlando to attend his birthday celebration, and along the way was another beautiful cemetery. Through the wrought iron fence I could see the arching arms of the live oaks, laden with Spanish moss, scooping down and then up in a sort of perpetual motion machine until billowing out into leafed wings splayed above the headstones. To see a few dozen old trees like that all together, with immutable, thick trunks and broad canopies, gathered together as a family—a forest, but not quite, like mourners themselves standing separately together—made me think of how I wouldn’t mind my mortal body feeding a tree someday. You could put me in that very cemetery, actually. It’s somewhere south of Orlando.

I listened to a podcast over the winter break I’ve been telling others about, an episode of Ten Percent Happier on learning to be more present in life. The guest, Matthew Brensilver, explained ‘being present’ as a sort of radical acceptance of death: To be fully present, you must be willing to die at any moment. Willing to relinquish the relentless pull of the future. Willing to stop planning for one moment. 

This spoke to me on a very deep level. My anxiety about the future often dictates what I do in the present, and for the most part the results are good. I make good decisions. I take care of others, I take care of myself. But it doesn’t always go this way, and of course thinking that it will is mostly indicative of a false sense of control. As with all spectrums between a thing and another thing, a pendulum swings between them, and my relentless planning for the future (I call it optimism) seems these days to have swung too far into the domain of cortisol and high cholesterol. This pendulum must now make its weightless turn at the end of its journey and begin gathering momentum toward the other side: the present, or the past, whatever it is—toward reflection, learning and acceptance. I will stop worrying. Stop planning so much. Take things as they come. I will wear my glasses, but not think of what they forbode. 

I imagine that to draw a big crowd at a funeral, you’ve got to at least be present for your life. So let’s start there.

How is your life? How are things? Have you ever had high cholesterol, and come back to the other side? Let me know, I absolutely love hearing back from you.

Also, here are some pictures of recent meals I’ve helped make, because where else am I going to put this stuff?

Things I’m proud of having made this month

Green things. Tofu, lentils. Sushi, kale and fruit. Can you spot the passionfruit that I grew?

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day. I look forward to a more just world, with true connection between us, and all of us doing the work every day to make it so.

xoxo
cassie.