I am learning that life is impermanent; there is a constant rising and passing away in life. I woke up and checked my social feed as usual. My sister was moving across country with her fiancé and son. I had been keeping up with her check ins. Before I went to bed the night prior, she had checked into a McDonalds. On May 5, 2014, I woke up to my nephew’s post: it read “they are gone; I am all alone.” This couldn’t be, I thought. My sister was here before I went to sleep. But it was true. My sister was gone. She lived on this earth, for thirty-seven years, and she was gone in between the night. Her death shook my confidence in what I thought would always be. I never could imagined that I would live without her. My sister’s death devastated me. It broke me; it broke me open and it showed me the impermanence in life. Life is like ocean waves; no matter if the tide is coming in or going out, it’s subject to change (for the good or the bad). Life is impermanent; we live in a constant rising and passing away. Nothing in life stays the same; everything is subject to change. This paradox says what is built today will be swept away by the passing wave of tomorrow. Although we live in this continual paradox of what we create is simultaneously passing away, we can live in the face of impermanence with hope because we are made of primordial energy that cannot be destroyed. My sister is a part of this energy . Our loved ones that have passed on is a part of this energy as well. We can look at passing this life as the end of one stage and the beginning of the next. Believe that the lives we create, the people we touch, and the memories we make are not in vain. Death and our impermanence is not the end but only the end of one stage that gives birth to the next, and when its our time to pass on, our loved ones will meet us and usher us into face the great beyond.
In Order to Be One Must Become 