Time To Die

 

 

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die…” —Ecclesiastes 3:1–2 KJV

 

It may seem harsh, or even cold, to write what I’m writing now. You may think the distress I’m facing has hardened me somehow, but the opposite is true. I have softened. What has become clear to me is simply this: the character I call my friend has completed its purpose under heaven.

 

At first glance, you might think I’m losing my mind by talking about my friend in acting terms. But don’t you see? That’s the realization itself. My Friend is an act—a form, a role, an expression. I’m not saying this to avoid pain. The pain is real and unchanged; I am losing one of my dearest friends soon. There is no escape from that reality. What I am trying to point toward is what life has shown me over and over: forms change.

 

This is a good moment to speak the parable of the flock again.

 

The Flock

 

The life story of every form is like a flock of black birds.

 

Picture a large flock moving against a clear blue November sky. The air is cool, the wind still. The afternoon is almost silent. You are unhurried—able to take in the magic. Three hundred birds gather and move as one. There is a shape in the sky. Their flight is like a chorus: individual motions supporting the whole. You can see each bird if you focus, but you can also see the larger body, fluid and unmistakable, made of their shared rhythm.

 

Now imagine a friend. Imagine a family member, someone you love. This flock is the form of that person. Each human body is fifty trillion living cells, synchronized, behaving as a single organism—your loved one.

 

Think of the follicles that once produced black hair, quietly replaced over time by those that bring only grey. Think of youthful eyes dimming, muscles weakening, skin shifting toward leather. All of this is just the shape of the flock changing. Birds come and go. The newer ones are slower, fewer, less in step with the community that came before.

 

And then comes the disbursement.

 

One wise bird flies away. Then another. Then another.

 

From a physical standpoint, you might call your loved one forgetful or weak. But look more broadly and you’ll see that each bird that leaves returns the flock to its perfect wholeness. The flock is always whole, even as it changes.

 

Use your imagination fully: picture the youthful version of your loved one and a single black bird leaving the flock. Follow that bird. It is unchanged. It finds other birds, other flocks. Sometimes the resemblance is uncanny—so much so that you say, “You look just like your father when he was young.” That’s the pattern revealing itself. That’s how forms move.

 

If you live long enough, you may find yourself saying, “You look just like your grandfather.”

We know these patterns instinctively.

 

Forms are like flocks. They behave the same way.

 

When a loved one dies, it is only the disbursement of a community.

The physical elements dissolve and return to other forms.

The breath they once breathed becomes the breath we breathe now.

And the elements of their spirit return as well—showing up in those being born, behaving in youthful ways.

 

No part of any form ever dies. Every part is always coming and going.

 

And perhaps now it has occurred to you that if all the elements of your loved one are eternal, then—given enough time—they could reunite. The youthful community could gather again, forming the person you love, remembering you and the form you once were too. And if the universe is eternal, there is infinite time for this reunion to unfold.

 

Not only possible, but inevitable.

 

What we call Love—between ourselves and another—is exactly what we awaken into when we all go to heaven.