I interviewed myself to gain courage; to enable my will to describe the secret.  The moment I was told never to talk about and best not to recall.  And then, that moment found me, as they always do.  That moment was never absent.  For a long time, it stood behind me and I couldn’t see it, so it wasn’t remembered as important.

Years passed. I was a young adult when the moment showed itself again within my shadow.  Staring, confused even, I watched….rubbed my eyes, pinched my skin, confirmed I was indeed awake…..and watched. What I saw was a shadow play; a shadow play within my shadow.  That was fantastic.  My younger self thought, Shadows don’t have their own movement, and they definitely don’t hold content! How Cool!

And then one day and many more years later, unexpectedly, after turning corners and crossing bridges, there it was.  Standing in the distance, the bright sunlight bouncing off snow and ice, I saw memory play out as a moving picture.  And the content could not be mistaken, and I was no longer a young woman interested in cool happenings.

 

This is a story about death.  My own.

 

The secret of death is a longstanding agreement, arranged (by Gods and Men) for reasons that are of no interest to me.  The secret of my death was the agreement my father and I made to ensure that my mother and brother never found out about the accident.  From his perspective it was about keeping himself out of trouble.  Truthfully, I made the agreement willingly and not to please him.  I too wanted freedom from the protection and projections that would surely infringe on my future life expressions.  I knew that a snow skiing accident resulting in death, would own my life, limit my choices, get used by others as an excuse to control and compress my nature.

I am not a good liar.  My facial expressions give me away.  And I don’t like lying.  Lies haunt and become a life of their own.  Instead, I scooped the experience up and made it into a snowball.  I tossed it behind me and walked away.

 

When people find out that you’ve died, they want to know.  They want to know everything.  Death generates so much energy.

 

It’s my experience that people get a tremendous boost of life force, a charge to their own batteries – when they approach the edges of death (through someone else’s experience).  It’s voyeuristic, sexual, ecstatic, dark, scary, and absolutely irresistible.  The attraction to the “need to know, need to ask” is magnetic; it has a gravity all its own.  They want to be comforted, to know that there is something beyond life as they know it.  Something that is pain-free yet extremely exciting and exceptional.

When I describe death, or try to, people generally withdraw.  They look disappointed and guilty.  I believe the feeling they run from is far more personal.  Somehow, describing death reveals their nakedness, their own discomfort with being caught in that voyeuristic state that promises orgasm.  No matter the details of story, when it describes death, an invisible door opens and through that threshold Death whispers, Hello, nice to meet you.  I’ve watched listeners as they move from attending to my words, into feeling revealed, vulnerable, naked.

I know Death.

The truth is, no amount of story can open the door to understanding.  Death is an emotional wilderness that renders you virgin.  Stripped of all shields, corruptions, falsities – defenses laid to rest, excuses disengaged – memories themselves evaporating, disintegrating and becoming only the fragments that remain part of your evolutionary future.

Death is to stand in the presence of creation with nowhere to hide and no ability to re-clothe oneself with the tapestry of experiences and choices that make up your skin.

In death, you meet yourself.

 

-Quin de la Mer  1/2018