Belonging Beyond Breath

See, that's such a special thing.

And I will say to you too, I think a lot of people in our society and in Western worlds don't tend to have words to express a lot of this and are very uncomfortable because I think like your parents may have been, number one, all of us are in some level conscious of the fact that our lives are short so I think it can make people uncomfortable to even talk about it I know when when my um parents passed my mother was right on top of she had labeled things she wants someone to have this someone to have that you know she she wanted to talk about it and a lot of my sisters didn't couldn't do it we don't we don't we don't want to think about it right but she prepared us for the fact that it's something we have to think about is something we need to think about because otherwise we leave everyone in limbo and really that's not that's not i think what we would want to do i don't think anybody would want to leave their loved ones in limbo um But when you're not here, you can't tell them, can you? So you really do have to think about it, don't you?

I totally agree because it takes away the taboo of it, you see.

It does.

Because it's part of life the same way if you do grocery shopping.

That has to be done every now and then.

And that has to be done as well.

There's nobody who can escape it.

So if we share that predicament, why not help each other dealing with it? and talking about it.

I speak about it with my parents who are in their 80s now very often.

And that was never the case before I went to Madagascar.

That was such a taboo.

And I also said to them, when you die, we just keep on talking about you as in present tense because your lessons, your everything, your personality, your wise words, they keep with us.

So why all of a sudden when somebody stops breathing, start speaking past tense to me it doesn't make sense because these people are very much still part of you

yeah and but you know in our society people are quite reticent to do that aren't they

absolutely absolutely

well i'm going to tell you all right now if any of you decide to pop your clogs okay i'm going to be talking about you in the present tense just so you know okay I might even write a book and I'll tell stories you've never told me.

Just for fun, right? It's got to happen.

It's got to happen.

So it's time to break that stigma and time to put that taboo to bed, isn't it? And really look at things a little differently.

I'm It'd be so comforting and so fulfilling for so many people if they could do that without being looked at like they're absolutely nuts.

Yeah, it strikes me how lonely it must be for people who lose loved ones and then are basically, after some amount of time, are basically banned from still talking about these loved ones.

I spoke to a lady the other day and she explained to me that her husband had died three years previous.

And she said, you're actually the only one that I can speak about him about.

Because everybody else finds, yeah, you have to get over it, you know, those times.