Dear Maida

When the sun is out, it is quite easy to smile and think more clearly.  When it’s comfortably cool, it seems to drench my hot insides and bring me new life.  Now I can finally sit down to write after feeling somewhat claustrophobic over the past week.

Since last week I have been thinking of Maida and what happens to a soul when it leaves its body.  But I can’t seem to look to religion for the answers; it would be too easy, requiring no thought or effort on my part.  I never liked to have the pre-made answer.  If I couldn’t come up with it in my own heart it felt cheap.  Just the way I am.  But Maida.  It doesn’t matter much to me that others have gone before her or that friends and acquaintances have lost their lives and I have moved on with mine.  It doesn’t get easier or clearer with time.

Maybe one of the things we learn as we grow older is that life doesn’t make more sense with age.  I have found, for me it seems, the goal isn’t to make any sense of it, although my brain will certainly try.  The actual task I find myself doing is simplifying life more and more.  We ponder and sit with it and then we make decisions.  Why some die young is not a good question to ask because you will never find a decent answer.  Your brain will sit in a feedback loop of complete confusion as it tries to find an explanation for the early death of someone who gave so much love to the world.

This dilemma has always left me with gratitude.  It was the only thing I could feel that felt true and not made up.  It was the only way I could absorb my life and the meaning of life and move forward with some level of confidence.  We think we need all the answers sometimes.  We think we need to say why something happened so we say it happened for a reason and then search for a reason until we find something suitable.  I don’t know that things happen for a reason, I only know they happen and I can certainly chose gratitude in all areas of my life.  I can live with it because it is true.  I am grateful.  Everything else is made up, although people certainly have the freedom to think the way that suits them best.  I encourage it.

Maida has left me with some very important lessons in this life.  Perhaps the greatest is to be gracious with oneself.  Perfection is a false idol because it steals our ability to connect with others.  It could be, if we turn that around, that because we are fearful to connect with others we seek perfection.  But that wasn’t Maida and that is why she was so special.  She concerned herself with connecting with others and she did it so well.  The only people who would judge her would be the people who are in hiding themselves.

I find that to be true always.  The judge is hiding something or best-case scenario is so closed-hearted they refuse to pay any attention.  Maida lived so contrary to this.  She was perfectly open and would say exactly what was on her heart.  She was in touch with her deepest self and she shared this, openly, because she knew that she was not alone.  In sharing she built community, which is more important than any doctrine ever written.  I only wish it were not so rare.

I do not know what happens when a soul leaves a body but I am very grateful for the time they were together.  Love you Maida.