Stellakitty - disjointed reflections on the passing of an aqcuaintance and Yom Kippur

My heart is conflicted. Peace, sorrow, awe and love. Mostly love.

Today, I've been feeling sorry for myself, and not. I've caught a cold. My energy is waning. I can't concentrate. I can barely talk on the phone or think straight. My dishwasher is broken (for real this time), so my kitchen is again a hazard zone. But I'm still feeling better than I was a month ago. And I take a great deal of comfort in knowing that I am taking care of myself as best as I can. So feeling sorry for myself, but also feeling good about myself.

And then the news came. News I never thought would really affect me, had I even considered the possibility. A young woman from the forum I'm taking a break from has passed away. She had EDS. She was brave, and funny, and feisty, and so very very spirited. She was 22.

I never met her. Interacted a few times. Her posts revealed a wisdom that went beyond her years, and sense of humour that buoyed her and everyone around her. She always focused on what was good in her life, not complaining about the pain, or the illness, or the hospital.

The news was shocking to me, and my reaction to it is surprising me. I'm sad, of course. But I've felt so many emotions in the last little while, that I felt I needed to write, and just see what came out. No matter how disjointed.

Today is Erev Yom Kippur. The holiest of holy days in Jewish life. It is the day of atonement, the day that our fate is decided. The day for us to make good, and look back with a critical eye at what we've done, and how to move forward, bettering ourselves in the year to come. It is also known as the day of awe.

I may have moved away from the traditional practice of Judaism, but I am still drawn to the big questions today, and especially now. The weird thing (for me) is that today I'm not drawn to them rationally, or with thoughts. I'm just feeling them. I've got no words.

I am reminded of an old story, where the unusual prayer of a young, uneducated boy makes all the difference in disaster being averted for his village - taken up by the power of the prayer on Kol Nidre, and wanting so badly to participate, but not knowing even how to read, he sings "alef, bet, gimmel, dalet... Lord, I don't know how to read, I don't know the prayers, but I know the letters... take them, and put them in the right order for me!"

That's how I feel right now. I may know the prayers, and I know how to read, and I have many many words, but none of them will do, to express what is in my heart right now.

When we were talking about my grandmother Renee's death, and how it affected our family so deeply, my aunt told me that she has always felt her presence, and to remember that when we breathe, we breathe the same air, and that air is where her spirit resides. She resides in all of us. Everyone we've loved and lost is in the very air we breathe, and in our bodies, and in our own cells.

There is only one air, one atmosphere, one world. And everything in our world is made of stardust, at the most basic physical level, and the highest spiritual level. And at the core of stardust, at the subatomic level, are particles that don't follow the laws of physics. There are particles that are there, and not there, at the same time. And that is what we are made of. Particles that disappear only to appear elsewhere, without rhyme or reason that we can discern. That is what we are.

Dust in the wind. Stardust. Cheesy songs, but no less true for being overplayed.

It's funny, because at one point I felt Alexa with me, and my thought was "but why the hell would she be here, with me, when her family and friends are probably so torn apart" and then I realized I was still thinking of her in physical terms - but that's no longer the case. Now she can be everywhere at once. And she, like my grandmother, and both my grandfathers, and all those I've loved and lost, will be wherever somebody needs her to be.

That gives me comfort.