Tag Archive | death

Surviving Death…

Mar1

In life, some of us have gone through life altering and harrowing experiences. Probably the most impactful of them being a brush with death. Either our own, or a loved one’s brush with it (whether they survive or not). It transforms the person you are, your values, how you experience life, what you do with it… if you let the experience in.

For some it molds their participation in life into something more present and profound, others surrender to the trauma (self-traumatizing). Imo.

Since I lost my mother, father, grandmother and brother (in a steady stream of deaths since 2016), I’ve struggled with how to be here. What to do with my life. Who I am now. What I want. What I value. Losing some important definitions which informed other definitions. Only now beginning to touch the form the changes are taking…

Having a place to voice your feelings is important for moments like this. A significant other, a friend, a therapist, a neighbor, even a fellow blogger … can witness the journey in, thru, around and out. Helpus locate and track ourselves, by holding space for this aspect of us.

I lack this reflection in my life.

I watched a play by play loss of life, taking the long road thru a few deaths now. The only abrupt unexpected one being that of my eldest brother (Butchy). The one which could have killed me, but didn’t. But I faded out a bit more. Like being pushed back into quick sand, just as you were making it out (out of breath). Your breath being a vision of life dreamed of over the course of a lifetime, you were living out.

My taste for it was losing relevancy, because the vision was now that of another…Tanyeno (before she lost her life…the people she loved).

Today I discovered these two…

Watching their story, was like having someone give you mouth to mouth.

Their story of survival, felt like mine got a little room.

I saw in them how life can continue to sparkle. My flattened reality, given breath – by watching THIS.

Like finding the reach-for-life band.

A sister and brother in surviving. Death. Theirs their own ordeal, mine that of family members.

Continue on if you’re one.

We are regenerators.

New lifers.

❤️

December First

Dec13

People say alot of things in life, but in the end their actions and the perspective they choose to take on you becomes the most important thing between you. That either blooms or dissolves a connection.

My brother (affectionately known as Butchy) passed away on December 1st.

And our connection was blooming.

On November 12th, I woke up from a dream that left me with a profound feeling of love. Aftermath of a dream I’d had.

I lay there in bed, just enjoying the feeling and memory before it disappeared.

Then sat up and began searching the net, to see what the dream meant.

It was one part renewing, one part deeply disturbing. The dream chronicled in the picture posted here.

A few of the articles cautioned, ‘Someone close will die.’ Or warned, ‘You will lose someone’ or ‘Something big.’ Adding to a small alarm trying to go off in me.

I wrote the dream down because my brother had advised me to write down my dreams, then look them up, in one conversation we’d had.

He did. So I was doing it.

A little more than two weeks later, he passes.

Today I thought, it was God’s way of telling me. And I may have embraced it at the time, but in the end I chose to focus on the love which emanated from the dream, telling myself THAT is how I want to feel in life.

Well. May the Lord Jesus Christ protect and keep you Butchy.

Thank-you for being my brother, friend, protector, and connection to life.

Rest in power and God’s love.

Till we meet again…

Death and the Lifeline…

Apr26

Friday was my mother’s birthday. She would have been 82.

I’m still gutted and can’t breath properly when I think about her death.

But some days, I’m present to loving her more now than ever. Because I see her efforts as a mom, how she tried to raise these people who would be prepared for the world in certain ways, and always value, even protect one another as a tribe-band-siblings. And more and more, to her heart as a woman, her reach and passion for the world around her, in the absence of that trait, anywhere.

Then I’m gutted again, for the void of that. Seeing in the most profound way, how indispensable people truly are.

(A lesson I don’t think anyone truly gets, till a loved one who they are engaged with dies.)

But, I’ve been moving forward.

I moved out of New York. Went back to school. Been trying my hand at online dating off and on (the pits still).

Made my first short in years, in a directing class.

A simple assignment, 3 shots edited to sounds not from the shoot.

I felt like I had just gotten out of bed, pulled the cover back on my life.

Found the fire in the embers.

She Died.

Mar9

Spirit obliterated, I continue on empty. Hallow. Devoid of meaning.

Poverty stricken in truth, earnestness, courage and love.

Navigating a mine field of struggling intentions, fleeting seconds after effort for their lack of anchor in life.

Now what I hate, incubating nothing but rootless idea.

Copyright@ 2017 Tanyeno Wotorson

The Goodbye I would have wanted

Mar8

…would have felt like this song.

White roses would have surrounded your bed, with a slight pleasurable smell filling your room.

I would have held your hand, and stood by your side.

Forever.

Close your eyes, dear mom. Rest. I love you.

Then I’d watch you do so, one last time.

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Goodbye (till we meet again).

Feb4

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I think the hardest lesson to learn in life is that there really is a separate universe outside of our hopes, aims, cares, desires, thoughts, and efforts.

And even if we are pretty aware of others and the world, most of us lose that ability in moments. Especially, where it concerns what we care about – in our loved ones (i.e. our wishes for them, our visions for them, our dreams for them).

But there comes a time when our loved one is NOT all that WE WANT FOR THEM. Instead something outside of that.

And most of us fail our loved ones in this place, being more attached to our vision for them than to them.

My mom passed away on Saturday after battling a few illnesses.

And she had become disillusioned, depressed, then hopeful, and finally resigned. Tired of illness, tired of healing, tired.

She’d even randomly told my brother and I she was ‘tired’ (on separate occasions).

But I wanted my mom to live, I wanted her to recover, I wanted her life back for her and even better than before. I wanted all the things I knew would lift her spirits and give her joy. For her. Forever.

But, none of us lives forever. Do we?

However when you love a person, you hold the best vision of their situation possible. It’s reverence for them and a respect for gift of their life.

However… a poor regard for the opposite.

And she was beginning to regard… the opposite.

Though my brother and I struggled to pull her away from… that.

On my way to work today I thought: whatever you you’re looking for, is looking for you.  It’s a quote I read somewhere, and really liked cuz I think it’s true. For me it means…whatever you value is coming. And my mom did not want to fight anymore, she requested a few times to stop treatment, to be taken off the machines.

We encouraged her out of that thinking, but the wrong SNF and wrong doctor who would ultimately cause her death finally arrived.

So, in the end, all my brother and I hoped for and struggled to achieve for her, fell away.

And she got her rest.

Our aims silenced, because perhaps, she needed us to be.

*Song dedication*

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