jan 5 2025: a tale of two funeral homes…

Every morning I like to start my day out with a contemplative walk with my puppy, Norman. There is a park that we frequent, sitting on the lakefront, and nestled between neighbourhoods. Among the family homes are two funeral homes. I pass them almost every morning. A reminder, of what’s to come.

It sounds morbid, but our culture also fears death like no other. Or is it, more so, a death of ego that they fear? A death of the self? Buddhist monks will often meditate on the image of their dead bodies. They will imagine and focus on how their body will change following a week of death, then a month of death. Imagining in detail, the insects that will reclaim their tissues. A reminder of what’s to come.

Death is only scary if you believe in it’s finality. That this life is all that there is. I choose to believe a different story. A story that makes me embrace death as a natural transition, and not a conclusion. Embrace it’s uncertainty, it’s demise of the ‘self’ that I am so comfortable with.

I used to walk between the funeral homes, in the middle of the street. As far from the stench of death that I could, fearing that it’s presence in my lungs would harm me. Then, I remembered the story of Guru Arjun Dev Ji, brutally tortured to death, but speaking the words of Anand Sahib (divine bliss) the whole time, a look of restful knowing on his face. A knowing that indicated that the death of this body was not the end of anything.

Someone cannot take your body, your soul, it was never meant to be taken. We are all borrowing time… what will you do with yours?

-immy, age: 27