What do we leave behind?

poems and reflections on loss, life and love

Yesterday would have been my father’s birthday. Instead it was the day that we closed the door for the last time to the home he had lived in for 30 years. A door closing. A lifetime closing.

Impermanence was one of the Buddha’s pivotal teachings. See how everything changes! Nothing stays the same. These words, these thoughts, these feelings, sensations, smells, tastes, sounds, sight - you and I and all this everywhere - changing. Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, but always changing.

My mind knows this. But to live it this last year has been a deep ache of letting go. To empty a house is to empty a life, God-like, deciding what matters. 18 years of carefully catalogued articles written for the Financial Times: never to be read again. Who decides what matters? Who decides what remains? When it comes to it, what do we leave behind?

A lifetime’s work returns to the Earth. A lifetime’s possessions distributed or sold. A house emptied; a lifetime dissolved. 

The closer I look, the clearer it becomes. All that remains are the imprints left - good, bad or indifferent - on countless hearts. All that remains are the footprints - good, bad or indifferent - on the body, heart and mind of this precious Earth. All that remains are the gifts and scars of how well we were able to love, this time.

The last time I saw you

The last time I saw you: aquiline nose, open mouth, paper thin skin. Beautiful hands, long fingers. They scooped you up in your sheets and zipped the bag shut. All the way. 

The last time I heard your voice: jaunty tone, confident answering-machine lilt. I’d known it all my life. Until the line went dead and you were no longer there. 

And then the house was emptied, first the clutter, finally the books. Until all that remained was a handwritten note, once buried behind books, flight times to Brussels in 1995.

So I searched in my heart for what lives on here, and found flashes of darkness and light. Because in truth it wasn’t easy to know you. Harder still to love you with this wide open heart you gave me.

But that was your greatest gift, this wide open heart. It’s just nobody showed you how to look after yours in a way that kept its flame alight. Nobody showed you that loving for Love's sake alone is its own inextinguishable delight. 

So I honour your life by receiving mine: by choosing to live in a way that lights up hearts, each heart flame lighting countless more. And when these words disappear and it’s my turn for crinkled skin to turn to soil, perhaps a few more hearts will glow around this world.

Because when all is gone, I hope to leave behind more light than I found when I came. 

Join me…

June 26-30, daily meditations online (the hour will include 15 minutes of Dharma teaching, 30 minutes meditation and 15 minutes interactive Q&A), 7-8am Sangha Live, more information here and register here.

September 23, yin yoga and meditation with live medicine music in collaboration with award winning music artist Shervin Boloorian, 1.30-4.30pm Love Supreme Projects, more information here and register here from next week (email me if you would like to be informed when registration opens).

October 9-15, silent yoga and meditation retreat at the Moulin de Chaves, France, more information here and here (this is filling up - email me for the booking link soon if you would like to join us).

November 25, daylong retreat, 10am-4pm London Insight Meditation, register here.

Feathers into empty space

There is no loss, only change.

The things I thought would stay forever were already transforming, slipping through my fingers, even as I held on to a dream that never was.

And the things I know are here to grow keep asking me to stay, but step back and further back as they learn to breathe on their own.

So much I believed would die remains, until a sweet surrender lets them go, falling like feathers into empty space.

While the future is always already here, waiting to be woven by hands no longer fretting and fussing with holding on and pushing away.

No part of this mystery has ever been mine to keep.