How to Live Forever

My great-grandfather’s funeral last week was overflowing; my cousins and I had to stand in the aisles. The room was a-buzz as both young and old got up to share stories. We laughed and cried without discretion. We cajoled one another, embraced, and hollered our support. It was the best funeral I’ve ever been to, because it wasn’t a sermon so much as an untempered dialogue. It made me remember that the root of both grief and joy is love. In that crowd it was tangible.

Great Grampy’s legacy is assured because he asserted his love with countless kind gestures. When my aunt announced that she wanted to be a mechanic as a child, he gave her a set of tools and asked her to help him fix his truck. When I was little, he would point to a picture of me and ask “Do you know who that girl is? I love her!” Every time any of us visited he would stand us in the same spot in the kitchen and snap a Polaroid. I imagine he had stacks of Polaroids somewhere that you could use like flipbooks to watch us grow.

The stories extend backwards and forwards in time. The oldest grew in light of his loving presence, and pass that love down the line to the youngest. I wonder – who taught Great Grampy to love? And who taught those people to love? And those people? How much cumulative loving intention throughout the generations of people resulted in a man so radiant with it?

The effort of understanding it is like seeing a ripple on the edge of a lake and trying to return to the point where a hand touched the water. Love - that sublime energy that enlivens us with joy and sorrow - carries humankind through the ages, like a disease without antidote. One sincere gesture lifetimes ago can still be felt among the living, and the gestures are countless. This is our lineage: our actions have vaster consequences than we can see.

I feel the gravity of my heart. We express ourselves spatially and temporally because we’re bound by matter, these bodies that wither and pass. But the currents that run through us are beyond time and space. Our intentions radiate into the lives of the people we encounter, triggering chain reactions beyond our comprehension. What kind of ripples are you sending down the line? Are you fully open to being a conduit for the love you receive?

Walt Whitman writes:

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what anyone supposed, and luckier.

The night before the funeral I dreamed he was laid out at my grandparents’ house. The rest of my family was sad and frantically busy. I watched them leave the room as they rushed off to get ready for the funeral, and when I turned back to look at him, he was sitting up, smiling at me.

His blue eyes shone. I said, “I thought you were gone.” He shrugged and said, “But I’m right here!” We laughed, and I said, “You’re going to freak everyone out if you are awake like this at your funeral.” The idea cracked us up. I looked to the door to see everyone rushing back into the room, and when I turned back, Grampy was laying down with his eyes closed again. He had the slightest grin on his face, as though he were keeping a beautiful secret. That's when I woke up.