90 Days of ILP

My Aunt Marge put the "great" in Great Aunt. A world traveller and a long-time singer in the church choir, she worked for RCA records in Mahattan for many years, owned a Siamese cat, and never failed to send a greeting card on a major holiday or birthday. Though she never had any children of her own, she was a major influence on the lives of my brothers and I, having introduced us to everything from Beatles records to the treasures of Africa to what it means to age gracefully. She passed away this morning.

She was 86, and for the past three months had been deteriorating so quickly, being checked in and out of the hospital many times, that her passing may have come of something of a relief. As she started to decline, my parents suggested I send her a call or write her a card to brighten her mood, but for one reason or another, I kept putting it off. It was never the right time, I never had the right amount of energy, my cell phone never had enough charge to make the call. This was not done out of malice, but out of a false need for everything to be perfect. I couldn't just buy a card, I had to design one from scratch. I couldn't just write a "get well soon" message, I had to tell her everything she'd meant to me in my life, even after she had retired, curtailed her travels, and become a permament fixture at the family dinner table back home in Upstate New York. But I didn't, and now it's too late.

While certainly this was a personal failing on my part, it also highlights a struggle I believe that many of us face: honoring our past and the people who made us who we are, and devoting our time to the future and our own potentials as human beings. I think we often feel burdened by the bridges we've taken to get where we are today, and in our weaker moments may burn them intentionally, or let them crumble through neglect. But these are the exact moments when practice, and our commitment to the elimination of suffering, matters most: when the people who've sacrificed to bring us the pleasures we now enjoy are suffering right in front of us. To take some form of action to alleviate this suffering may not seem like the most convenient thing to do, nor the thing that will help us the most in our careers, but that's the point: the world is more than just us and our own concerns.

And so, with another important participant in my evolution as a human being now leaving us behind for a better place, I think it is a good time to remember this key cornerstone: our lives do not belong to us. Aunt Marge, Rest in Peace.