The Funeral

It was a quiet, serene Saturday morning, just before 9:00 am. The temperature was cool and crisp, but still a bit warm for this

time of year. The sunlight gleamed off the shining chrome rims of the black Cadillac sedan parked in front of the small, unassuming brick building. A small gathering of parishioners muddled about at the entrance of the church, talking in quiet, subdued tones. A young man stood off to the side adjacent to the parking lot, smoking a cigarette, his attention dominated by the touch screen of a cell phone that seemed permanently affixed to his hand. An elderly woman held tight to the arm of her husband as he labored to traverse the three small steps before reaching the double glass doors leading into the "Angel of Zion House of God and Tabernacle."

Inside the church foyer, a crowd had developed as attendees stood patiently in line, each one waiting for their opportunity to sign their names in the registry, memorializing their presence. Of course, the quiet reality was that this was but a mere symbolic gesture, gleamed as respect for the departed, but, more apparently, for the family who still languished among the living. It was one of many such pretentiously otiose death rituals washed clean and served as etiquette yet strictly adhered to by countless souls who, however subconsciously or even reluctantly, by default, quietly acknowledged the sobering inevitability of their own approaching event.

Inside the sanctuary, the sound of music permeated and filled the air, flying above us with wings, not unlike those of the single white-winged dove that would be ceremoniously released outside after the services had concluded. The room was filled with parishioners, and I, among them, am a witness. Many of us from dissimilar walks of life yet connected by our kinship to the now-absent friend, co-worker, or family member to whom we had all come to pay our respects. Or had we?

Either way, the miracle had taken place, and the soul transitioning, by our presence here on this day, had accomplished in death what it could not in life. And the wheels continued to turn. And I was certain of one thing: It would only be a short time before we would all slip back into the mundane from which we’d arrived there. And the sun would rise and set, rise again, and set yet again, and none would think it strange in the slightest.

As I sat in the church, quietly, taking into my mind all that my five senses could relay, I began to think about why it was that I was even there. Why were any of us here? I thought to myself as I looked around the room at the faces melding into the ether of the moment. Beautiful memories of the life of the departed captured by photographs and visual images on a projector screen, played like the soundtrack to a movie. And if you were not so inclined to just sit in the stillness of that moment and breathe in its effervescence, it would be just enough to distract you. Just enough to keep you from seeing it. But I saw it.

In the eyes filled with tears, the voices lifted in praise and laughter, and those hearts broken yet still rejoicing, I couldn’t tell if what I was seeing, hearing, and feeling was actually real. For the first time in my life, I gave voice to the question that had been growing inside me. One world and seven billion different consciousnesses? Or is it one consciousness and seven billion different worlds? Seven billion different realities, each one born out of fear and the blind, uncontrolled worship of the five senses and the mind. Distorted, disconnected, and incognizant. An illegitimate, bastard existence, fathered by the ego and the desire to desire. I closed my eyes and thought to myself, who are we fooling? The truth of the matter is, in all our efforts, we only ever fool ourselves.

“Hi, I’m Zola,” said the young girl suddenly standing in front of me as if she’d appeared right out of thin air.

She had to be about thirteen or so I guessed. She had beautiful bouncing curls and warm caramel-colored skin. Her name sounded familiar, but I wasn’t really sure why. Then it dawned on me who she was. Instantly, I found the corners of my mouth stretching into a glancing smile.

“Hi, Zola," I said. "I’m Savannah.”

She hesitated for a moment, looking around as if she were expecting to see someone. Her eyes scanned and recorded everything around her.

“So, how’d you know my dad?” She said, turning her attention back to me.

It was her! The daughter I’d never met. His baby girl, who I should have held in my arms at the hospital when she was but a few minutes old. All of a sudden, I felt a flood of shame and remorse crash over me in cold, unrelenting waves that chilled me right down to the bone. But I resisted my emotions and kept my composure.

“I’ve known your dad for a really long time, Zola. He was...my brother.”

My eyes scanned towards the front of the room, where the casket with the remains of my haunted past lay no more than twenty feet from where I sat.

“Brother?” she puzzled. “My dad did not have any sisters!”

She was right. Out of the fullness of my memories, I had misspoken. I nodded my head in agreement.

“I know. I guess I should have said, he was like my brother. We grew up in the group home together, your dad and me. Younger than you when we first met. And were very close coming up. Family isn’t always just your blood. You know?”

Zola was obviously highly intelligent and she seemed to have a keen sense about her that was beyond her years. Her confidence was more than apparent. She never once shifted her eyes away from mine the entire time. It was as if I could feel her energy scanning, probing me.

“Well, if you guys were so close," she snarled sarcastically. "How come I never met you before?”

I chuckled quietly, but the question struck deep at my core. I could feel the monstered hurt so long submerged stirring deep within me like Leviathan burrowing on the ocean floor.

“We had a really bad fight, a long time ago," I explained in a half-hearted attempt to mask my guilt. "Before you were even born. We hadn’t talked much since then. But I did know about you. Your mom sent me a card when you were born. And I know your father loved you very, very much.”

For the first time, her gaze softened. I sensed a warming in her energy as her beautiful chestnut-colored eyes glowed like a perfect sunset over the horizon on a warm summer’s eve. And at that moment an energy surged inside me. My heart felt light, as if it were rising right up out of my chest, and as it did so did my spirit until I was floating high above the room. And I saw colors I’d never seen before, shapes, and patterns of a completely new and different genesis. A complete synthesis of all things.

But the sounds I heard did not register in my ears, nor the images through my eyes. And the feelings swelling inside me were not from my old heart, but a new one. One that, somehow, I was sure did not belong to me. Instead, I and everyone, and everything living and dead, past, present, and future, belonged to and in it. Inclusive, and connected, a oneness without end. An unyielding thing of beauty that transcends thought and time.

When I opened my eyes again, everything looked different than it had before. The sounds, hues, and colors were more vibrant and engaging, almost animated as if they were living, breathing things. And then I knew why I was there. I knew why we were all there. And I knew it didn't matter if we all understood or accepted what I'd just experienced as reality. There was nothing we could or needed to do as a requisite of it's favor because IT knew and claimed all of us. And that was more than enough for the time and space we were sharing.

Subtly at first, and then with a growing intensity, I began to feel the presence of an energy filling the room around me. I turned and looked across the other side by the far window of the church. I

couldn’t believe my eyes. Surely, I was hallucinating. Was I losing my mind? I thought to myself. But I wasn’t. It was actually him.

I looked at Zola and I could see that she could see him too. This was unbelievable! I could feel my physical body being abandoned by the quickening of my spirit.

“Santana?” I whispered.

He stood there, as plain as day, staring at me with a warm embracing smile. I could literally feel him. His energy flowed through me like the morning sun through a plate glass window.

“I never doubted your love Savannah,” he said to me. “And you were always...always in my heart.” His lips never moved, but I heard his words in my ears clearly, like a voice inside my head.

Zola looked at me with exploding amazement. “You can see him,” she exclaimed.

“Yes,” I answered. “You can too!”

“Of course, I can,” she said matter-of-factly. “He

came to my room the other night, and we talked. For a long time.”

Her eyes were filled with joy and a look of real satisfaction...no confirmation. As if her knowing that I could see him too validated in her mind, what we both were struggling to accept as reality in that moment. “He explained everything,” she continued. “Told me not to be afraid, or to worry. He said I would meet someone close to him that I didn’t know. I’m thinking he meant you.”

I didn’t know what to say, or to think, or even what it was I should be feeling. I had no answers, but somehow, somehow, I understood. I felt a vibration deep inside my spirit that guided me to the point of surrender. And so, I did, recognizing that thought and reasoning would not serve as currency for me here, not in this space. It was beyond the cerebral safeguards and controls. I was birthing in spiritual waters, where the physical form and the hard-wired analog of the mind could not translate.

All I could do in that moment was to reach for Zola’s hand. And we sat there, together, for some time, just the two of us, in that place where only we existed. The past, the present, and the future were all coalescing into one eternal stream right in front of my eyes. I was seeing time as it really is. Everything that I had thought and believed was real seemed to fade into the fabric of the facade of life, still present, but distant somehow, peripheral to the veritable reality that existed openly yet somehow concealed, as if hiding in plain sight from those with eyes that look, but never see.

And I understood it plainly then, even though I could sense in my energy that it wasn't my thoughts that were comprehending; it was a continual rhythmic vibration, pulsating like the very heartbeat of the universe, calling out to me from everywhere at once. And it resounded in my heart, how could we see when we're looking outward for that which can only be found within? And then I understood what had escaped me all along. I understood the blissful ignorance of the gilded cage that fails to realize that the heavens above are but a mere reflection of the heaven that resides deep within our own being. That is the power that eludes most of us.

I looked at Zola, and I could see it in her eyes, as I knew she could see it in mine. We both had the vision now. She gestured with her head towards the front of the church, where her mother was seated. I nodded and made my way to her. The years of guilt and shame that I had felt because of my self-imposed exile from those I loved stripped away from me with every step I took until all I felt was the warm glow of a love unlike anything I had ever experienced.

She turned and looked at me just as I approached. Her eyes filled with happiness despite the heaviness in her heart.

“Oh, Savannah, you came!" Tears flowed from her eyes as she threw her arms around me. I could feel her heart beating as our bodies pressed together. "I’m so glad you're here. I was afraid you wouldn’t come. It’s been so long, Savannah. I've missed you. He missed you."

"I know. I missed him too. And I missed you. Always."

"He loved you very much, Savannah. No matter what, or how long, that never changed.”

I was both encouraged and comforted by her words. They were the sorrow-filled words of a grieving widow. The loving wife of the brother I once had and loved, only to lose to frivolous misunderstanding and hurtful words. But now, through the miracle of my awakening I had been favored to find my way to her again. And the circle is complete, yet incomplete. And she is and will be the sister I’d denied myself for so long but will cherish with every remaining breath of my life.

So, I shed a few tears for the moment, and a few more for myself, knowing that I had lost the finite form that I once knew as my friend and brother. Understanding with a heart filled with acceptance that I would see him no more in this material existence. And as I thought of him, I smiled, remembering all the happy times we’d shared, knowing that those memories and the memories of him and the two of us together, would always be with me.

I kissed and hugged each of the family members, assuring them with a supreme confidence that our beloved was not dead, as life is cyclical and all things are a part of the whole --the ONE. And in that ONE, there is the essence of perpetuity and a state that abides. And it is free of fear and the negative vibrations born from it. Free of want and desire, anxiety, or stress. But most of all it is just FREE...and open to all of us if we choose it.

I turned and looked towards the door, and again, he was there. Standing tall and straight. His beautiful form, festooned in a fine white linen suit, resonated like a newly born sun, bright and hot yet neither consuming nor consumed. As we stood there, our eyes feasting on one another from across the room for what seemed like a thousand stolen moments in the cracked glass of unraveling time, I just smiled at the brightness of him in the room. In return, he smiled back at me with the eyes of someone who’s seen beyond the veil and knows the secrets that long to be revealed. And I heard his voice in my ears again, speaking as if he were as physically close to me as my own beating heart.

“Time is not what you think. There is only the here and now.” He spoke with a confidence that strengthened my conviction and set me on the path of what I knew would be the journey to self-discovery and an open heart. “I promise we’ll see each other again.”

And then, just like that, he was gone.

I put on my coat, and I turned and walked back out into the cool of the morning breeze. My heart was warmed by my experience on this eventful day. And I carried with me an awareness that in me there is a knowing that supplants belief and leads me to the gates of surrender, where I can choose to just be. Just...be. And in the warm light of forever.