Life and Death ~ Symbols and Signs

I never imagined that I would part with my desk, but then again I hadn't anticipated that there would be two of us living here at the time. It happened so quickly. It was a sign–a sign that I had been asking for, a sign that I was ready for love after having lost...I was prepared to live a solo life; then one day something shifted within my very being and I sat with myself and I spoke to my late beloved and I asked him for guidance–and the signs–they came. 

One day, I decided that I was ready for love, that I was open to the possibilities and I set my intentions, I kissed it to the wind, didn't brood on it, only let nature take her course. And I feel blessed, blessed to have gotten through the grief, to have a strong spiritual foundation and strong connection to nature, held together by something beyond myself, yet very much within my reach. Everything that I had ever come to believe in life–everything that I had become was put to the test. Losing a mother at a young age, then my grandmother, grandfather, two uncles. The most confusing and shattering to my very being–that tested me to the very core was of losing my late beloved to a sudden and unexpected death. 

But, I got through it. His death brought me closer to myself, life was held up to me, offered in the palm of my hand, and pushed me to do a few things that I may not have had I not seen the fragility that life is and how moments must be seized.

It's not something that I talk about very much, of course, and when I started writing on this page this morning, it was about the desk, and somehow he slipped into the page. I'm not sure what it is about the day; perhaps it's the grey clouds–the contemplative rustle of the breeze against a primed sky, ready for anything–for any thoughts to reveal themselves. 

I wasn't using the desk. It was becoming a clutter magnet and so one day I stood there looking at my options, what could I reshuffle that I hadn't already reshuffled? The only option I had never considered was parting with the desk. It was the constant. It was supposed to be my writing desk, but in the years we've lived here together in this cozy apartment, I can count on my two hands how many times I've sat at that desk to write. I need my own space when I write, and that tends to be in the living room, so I make do. Sometimes I sit on the couch, but I seem to do most of my writing on the low coffee table. I prop myself up on a pillow, lean back into the couch and write away. I've been sticking to my paper journals lately and have not been doing much computer writing.

Death is a strange creature. The very word, death, seems to conjure negative images and feelings, but as far back as I can remember, I have dedicated a small portion of my life to befriending death, of welcoming him into my life, of learning what I can of him–death in its many guises. Death not only of human flesh and beingness; death as parting of something or someone, death from the past–parting with anything that has such a hold on you that it makes you sick to think of what it would be like without it.

My older brother used to cause me great stress in my twenties when he would tell me how he wouldn't know what he would do if anything ever happened to me. "Move on. Live life." That is what I would tell him now, but back then I just told him that he would be fine and that we can't dwell on these things. And now I'm thinking, if we do dwell on these things, it's best if it's in a positive light. It's best if we ask ourselves how can we live life, so that death, whenever it/he/she arrives is greeted in peace.

I've always had a fascination with death, not in a macabre way, rather as a way of life. With life comes death and sometimes death is life. 

The desk is gone. I miss what it symbolized, but in its place we have moved the chest of drawers and it brings the needed order and balance that was lacking in our bedroom. Since then, over the past few weeks, we have let a few other pieces go and have found new ones–again bringing harmony to our little abode. I still have a bit of work to do, to work through some more of the clutter, but it feels as though, it's coming together and I feel that the first step was imagining the space without a desk, without an object that I so identified–that represented a part of who I am. 

I realize though, that what that desk represented is within me and that it can manifest wherever I am. I carry the symbols and the signs within me.