catacosmosis

When I die:

I want my body burned to ashes. When my ashes have cooled, put me in a glass bowl in the rain. Let it soak into me. Then, sit with me.

As you hold space for me and remember me as I was, blend ash and rain water together with your energy, and your tears. Mix me into clay and hold this useless lump of me in your hands, remembering how mine once held yours.

Meditate on how I came to be this ball of carbon, calcium, magnesium, potassium, phosphorus and water. Allow the reality of me in this form to guide your focus.

Consider how you came into existence – how my once alive and useful existence wished for you, prayed for you, conceived you, grew you, delivered you, raised you, loved you… Know that in so many ways, some no one will ever know, I fought for you.

It was all for you.
All of it.
EVERYTHING.

Now, take that lump of nothingness and make me into a vessel. Decorate me with runes of hope, and of love, and of strength and of grace. Shape me with your own hands, just as your existence shaped me into the person I was meant to be…then fire me in a kiln, letting the heat give me permanent form once more.

Keep me in a safe place, and go live your life. Live the entirety of every day like it is your last, fully aware that one day you, too, will physically be nothing more than ashes. My final request, then, is that when you become those ashes, have your children place you in that vessel.

Now, better than when I was alive, I can carry you once more.

**inspired by Jeffrey McDaniel’s “The Vase”