When the Worst Happens, Again!

 Reflecting on our teen son Kaelan Alexander Palmer Paton's passing during the time of Passover, Lent, Easter, and April 1st as a meaningful day of reincarnation in the Tibetan worldview has been on my mind this past week.

Sadly, in the midst of all that, another young man died in the same river as my son, not far away, at about 2 am not long ago.  A young man, let's call him Robert for some anonymity,  also was out with friends, having what was supposed to be a good time.

The full moon  earlier in the week likely got people thinking about the night being bright as day, and maybe a good time to play.  The first time I got on Facebook  was after learning of our Kaelan's passing about a month after it happened.

 Tonight I took a moment to find out some details online about Robert, whose friends I happened to know as well, and read that there were a few friends on shore and others out in a canoe and such, but that their canoe tipped over.

Then the tragedy of losing a young man in the prime of his life just 'happened'. Comments about safety and such don't matter right away. That can come later, and hopefully will reach the awareness of US-All to live more carefully, gently, lovingly.

Some say those things can really help one avoid a sudden turn of bad luck. Still, when one is living and growing, the ups and downs become a big part of 'life'' so no amount of reflecting is a guarantee..

Robert could have been any of us, and is all of us, to some degree. Life is full of plenty of risks particularly when driving or just trying to have some fun as seems reasonable yet involves some risk.

Our son Kaelan (described in other posts such as Yellow Medicine Dancing Boy) lived with a lot of adventure mixed in with being a good student and strong family member. The journey of a person leaving this life suddenly (or even when expected) can give us pause to reflect on how we are living our lives and what really matters.

The families and friends also feel the effects for days and months in various ways of 'the effects' of having someone journey on before them.  In my case, that is me and our crew which numbers small in the immediate count, of his three sisters, his dad and surviving Grandma, but quickly grows exponentially when counting the aunts and uncles and 'cousins by the dozens' and his many dozens of friends of all ages.

Everyone can benefit from having a huge amount of ongoing support when difficulty, change, and loss come their way. Our son's service is on youtube (Kaelan Paton Memorial Service in short clips with some video on 1st and 10th with photos added in) which may bring comfort to others in times like this or even when reflecting on one's own mortality or time of transition to a spiritual being.

These things take time, and one day may feel like a week, and a season like a year..but when one year then two and more go by, somehow some other parts of the world have continued enough to trust that one is 'back on more solid ground' and that one can face 'life on life's terms'..

When the Worst happens again, however, there is no way to kid oneself that it was easier the last time.

For me, and for each person, one loss can be linked to others in one's life and community..sometime I want to list all of those from start to the more recent..and for now, I'll put down a basic list such as a friend George who died at age 12 falling off a load of hay onto the road when I was in his 6th grade class.

Could he have reincarnated to be my son I've wondered after learning more about the possibility of reincarnation. I had a dream once we were having tea at the falls..and that's where my son died. Strange coincidences like that a short quip of my son saying "Have yourself a cup of pudding" jokingly to calm his kid sisters down, echo that idea of having tea. What about my friend who died when I was 17 from an accidental or possibly a self-inflicted shooting?

That left a huge hole in many hearts, might she have let me cared for her as my own to fix some brokenness in her soul? I had worried about that for years and vowed to help people address depression or stress early on with teamwork and concern since I was so taken by surprise that Could Happen.  What about a close person to our family, Gerry, who got killed on the NYC subway when chased by a mob when I was about 18 back in 1981?

 I found myself googling more information on that and realized he actually died in large part for not having a pair of flip flops and a tee shirt and a train ticket for about 20 dollars to get back to New Haven after being robbed. He had been a star athlete and had gotten on a bus to make a difference and start a new part of his life in DC telling his brother who worked with troubled teen boys, 'It's great to be a human being." Basically, anyone in our family and friend circle theoretically could be our kin, our kids and even we ourselves likely 'chose' people from our former lives, the theories go, to be related to in this life, heal past karma and become 'better human beings', echoing my Gerry's timely, as it turns out, parting words.

Maybe we could find ways to address the oversight that 'many shortcomings of the NYC security and train personnel as well as a lack of common sense--and a lack of 911 or calls for help from people who could have assisted--contributed to our cousin's demise. I felt there was a kind of warning in what I was reading, trusting that if Gerry were alive he would care about difficulties I were facing for years with matters that no one seemed able to understand.

The loss of another young woman to cancer factored into me thinking she was perhaps helping me reflect on her loss to prepare me for the worst news of the loss of my own son only a year or two later. Her family's phone number seemed so similar to mine and the horses near my home reminded me of her so I let her parents know I felt there was something we should share about these 'messages', yet in hindsight I felt more it was to help me prepare for the unthinkable. 

When my cousin died so strangely and harshly in NYC, that made me not want to think about going to the city, but I realize that was a particularly hard period at Times Square. Another 'worst ever' was the suicide of Vassar college senior and friend, John Iyoya when I was about 20.Of course there were other losses of folks I knew or was close to--other students dying in a drunk driving accident (Jeff C and many others from older classes) and a nice fellow in his early 20s (anyone seeing these early adult years as high risk?)  from drugs or violence related to that, his mom  to a blood clot and then her other son to a motorcycle accident.

The losses of friends to cancer still don't seem real a few years later, nor do the passings of many aunts and uncles and cousins and I'm almost 50 but from a large family, so this is the other side of knowing a lot of people.

The small towns in which I live also resonate with a sense of shared loss when someone dies 'an untimely death', but really as one friend shared her vision, 'whose to judge another's passing'. These things are 'beyond the scope of our comprehension'. Yet, since a high school sophomore was the victim of a drunk driver hitting the car he was riding in when I was turning 15, I've wondered why not try to stop the inane practices leading to such deaths. I'm all for MADD and other outreaches to stem the tide of such losses.

Yet some like Rudolf Steiner or Edgar Cayce say there may be some big balancing of cosmic or karmic scales, so it may  behoove each of us to try to live as reasonably as possible and steer clear of what would lead us to despair or taking one's life according to Eric Pearl of The Reconnection and likely many other teachers around the  world such as www.drsha.com Just guessing there, but there's more than meets the eye to this living and dying business, and it should not be about money or just having a life of no suffering.

Some mediums or others say 'if it's one's time, one will die one way or another about that time...whereas if it's not your time (or maybe not what your soul agreed to before coming to the mortal realm, again perhaps) then it's not likely one will die. Still, some may get caught in another's karma (negligence, accident, etc yet even then there may have been some 'arrangement before coming to earth to allow or have karma or lessons, etc come forth or be paid off in a certain manner.

I realize with Christian and many other beliefs of the world, that's not how it works theoretically, yet maybe there is some degree of 'both/and' or a way of having the divine offer more options or blessings as they are given--such as what www.drsha.com is suggesting, or as what the teachings of the New Testament and Jesus offer, forgiveness and healing through a spiritual gift from the Holy Spirit that one asks for and can then receive freely. Certainly worth talking over even if it 'sounds too good to be true'.

Yet in light of all the political, economic, legal and social harm and difficulty religion has caused, along with millions of killings from the Crusades through the Holocaust, well, it is almost too much to ask for people to be open to the discussion. How much suffering would any person, group, state or nation really be asked to bear? Even in these modern 'advanced' times, most women silenced on the planet when it comes to having any meaningful input into critical situations. The irony that every person, male and female or other gendered, is born of a woman yet women are denied meaningful roles and power is astounding. The efforts of www.girlrising.org hope tp address this disparity by promoting education yet a few hundred families own as much as half of the population of the world. That makes for a 'game over' situation and the climate threats do not make the final rounds of decades on the plan-it as we know it any easier, even if we can brave envisioning it not only as earth but plan-it Heart!

Back to my life--overall it's been fine physically but quite the learning experience emotionally. Thankfully the great love I felt for my family and the communities I have been a part of have helped me pull through, feeling I was walking a path that Jesus and his Holy Spirit would see me through, even when people seemed to tire of me and my struggles. Overall, aside from a myriad of challenges and waves of difficulty,  I felt I had enough love for the whole bunch of us again with 'love from above' guiding me through hard times over my whole life.

 Back at Vassar in the early 1980s, many other students didn't seem to be that affected longterm by John Iyoya's passing if they did not know him. Maybe I wouldn't have felt so sad and moved if I had not had a crush (that went nowhere, which in hindsight I trust was a good thing, yet could that have made him feel differently at least for a while longer?) on him at one point  and valued his friendship. I decided it was time to get to know more of my family even out West and took a semester off to travel around all of the US.

I realize we can't always drop our lives and do something to soothe our hearts, but sometimes, if that is possible, why not give it a chance? It's a luxury I see now that few have been able to even dream about. Life is pressing down hard  on most folks, but in ways after Kaelan's passing 'survival of the soul and hope for a decent way to piece my life   back together' became the name of the game.

I had other battles to wage too to find justice not only for myself but for many families I had met who'd been practically 'done in' by the court system on many levels in the name of divorce and custody...so what was the meaning of life anyway, I'd wonder for years before and during and even since going through huge challenges and losing other dear ones..my parents shortly after my  brother Dale also by gunshot but not completely clearly whether self-inflicted or not and perhaps on the heels of cancer distressing him with high medical costs and a poor prognosis.

Nothing seems well-documented, and that even goes for our son's passing which had many layers of difficulty for years to consider along with the factors of him being unsupervised with other minors at a dangerous river. Does anyone care even now to look into how to assess what really factored into the difficulty of that time in his life and his outing with friends at a dangerous place on the last day of school or even if it had been in the summer?

Of course they do in theory, but is anyone qualified or thinking along the lines of Preventing Similar Tragedies because that would be an ethical and practical thing to do? We're not quite there yet. It took us a while even with the many numbers of people, sometimes neighbors and co-workers, dying of cancer to welcome Relays for Life and for other Causes.

We're waking up to our collective condition, yet tend to leave most things in' the hands of the professionals''. Well, when another loss happens, such as the Sandy Hook, Newtown tragedy which is at the forefront of the gun debate and in the media, more folks face that  unsavory  question of how to respond and carry on in the wake of 'the worst happening' again and again, normally on a small scale or one or two people dying, sometimes in violence or the more unthinkable large scale violence.

We  wake ourselves  out of our assurance that we are safe since we are in America or even more in our hometowns. Bad things do happen to people in all places. The odds go up with more variables of change and crime nearby maybe, but some thinkers say 'it's all in accordance with our soul's   plans' and that ideally, living with basically good intentions and actions we will maybe come back to other good lives with many of the same people or kinds of people to keep balancing out karma and fulfilling higher dreams. Well, these are lofting thoughts at a Zi time (between 11p and 1am) when the yin and yang of the universe and my system need to rebalance.

So, let US-All trust in a collective greater good, and aim to view TANSH (trauma, tragedy, transition at Newtown, Sandy Hook) to be something we can all face not only as 'the worst thing' but as a reminder of the fragility and miracle of each life and the awesome power and love people have to dream and transform their lives and relationships into something more healing and helpful to our plan-it and fellow beings with whom we may be journeying with through  the ages for reasons beyond which we can readily comprehend.

Surely, there is evidence of growing meaning and healing on many levels for all of US  and our plan-it at this critical time in human and huwoman history..Let's begin to enjoy our beings and envision a brighter future unfolding no matter what happens in the realm of matter.

What matters is not readily visible to the eye, but rather is discernible with the heart and collectively with our shared thinking, feeling and caring for ourselves and others.

Everybuddy can trust as my Mom said of her 12th child, she was 'Worth It' that they are too! More people who are worth it keep happening, again and again! we're here so let US-All make the most of it for a nicer world! how about having a collective effort  within reason and for many as we can to make the Best Happen, Again!

Let US-All  rediscover why we came to this plan-it and how we can value our shared journeys on earth, our one physical home...where truly no one is homeless, maybe houseless (see houseless.org since I met Michael the founder by 'chance' recently).

  Give yourself a Hug and welcome yourself home when you wake up each day, and anticipate the many good friends and folks who will hug you and yours when someday you  go Home (again!).