DEATH IS AS ABOUT AS ESSENTIAL AS YOU CAN GET.

And so is birth.
My head is spinning from both.

My big brother is dying.  From a worn out heart.  Of course, I am sad.
I will go to visit him in Chicago this week-end.
I intend to make him play Monopoly to see if I can finally beat him.
We will remember together--family ritual, food, fights, games, sorrows and joy.
We will laugh and cry.
I will wish he would have another heart miracle.  (He has had two)
He won't.
I will mourn him well.

My newest grand child is robustly living.
She is 3 months old.
I was close by as she went from her mother to the world. 
Now there is a  transition!!
I make up songs for her.
We imitate one another as she earnestly struggles to figure out sounds.  Makes her sweat. (Learning is hard work!)
I will celebrate her living.

Normal life and death.

But up close, both are so profound that I find them disorienting.
So mysterious that time takes on another dimension.
There is a sweet essential quality to both.
To enter into them is an honor and enrichment that shifts me out of "normal" into mysterious.
I'm glad for the mystery and the reminder.
It makes me more alive and gives me more awe to work into the dailiness of
what to cook for dinner.

"Essential" relieves me of the flotsum and jetsam of all distraction.
Pure life.  Pure death. What matters.