The wheel and the windmill

The wheel and the windmill

From afar, and recently, on my trip to India, in person, my Hindu family, friends, neighbors, well-wishers from every sphere of my past, have been swearing on the karmic cycle, the soul, the wheel. Many of them have referred to Raahi as a “liberated soul,” one who has attained moksha or nirvana. I am grateful. It should be enough. The compassion, a heavy sigh, wordlessness. But few people stop at that.

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Birth, death, rebirth

Birth, death, rebirth

We see it in the flowers, the leaves and the trees, in the plight of the caterpillar and beauty of the butterfly. The days of the week, the months, the years, the seasons; all one pattern that keeps swirling. As much as I don’t want the time to pass, it inevitably does. The more time passes, the further I am from that moment when I kissed her little head and tasted birth and death at the same time. I lived and died in that moment, along with her.

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The dead are not under the earth

The dead are not under the earth

For the second year in a row, we move Joseph’s urn to the mantle, along with his birth announcement, and the photo of my pregnant belly days before he died (was dying even then?). But this, too, in its own way, feels empty. Why do I do this? I wonder. I do not believe that this night the veil between the worlds will open. I do not believe the dead will come back to visit us. I do not believe I will be reunited with my son.

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