On grief, the soul's journey, and the remembrance of why we are here.
A week ago, Isaiah called 911 from the apartment attached to our home. He had stopped breathing, and the emergency responders worked to bring life back into his body.
For one week, he remained suspended in what I can only describe as the in between.
The void.
That mysterious threshold between life and death, where the body remains, yet something far greater seems to be unfolding beyond what our human eyes can see.
And I became a witness.
There is something profound about standing at the threshold of another person's life. We are brought face to face with the mystery of our own existence. The fragility of the body. The breath that sustains us. The invisible thread that connects us to one another.
And the question of what it means to be a soul having this human experience.
As I witnessed Isaiah in that space, I found myself contemplating the greater journey of his soul.
Would he return to his body, perhaps to a life profoundly changed? Or was his soul preparing to leave this earthly experience and continue its journey beyond the physical?
I did not know.
And perhaps that was part of what I was being asked to understand.
That we cannot always know the greater purpose of another soul's journey. We cannot determine its timing, its lessons, or the mystery of its arrival and departure.
We can only stand in the presence of what is unfolding.
To witness.
To love.
To honor the sacredness of a life.
When the doctors finally confirmed that Isaiah would not return, we faced the reality of his passing.
Isaiah was an organ donor.
And in his leaving, he offered something extraordinary. The possibility of life continuing through others.
Another breath.
Another heartbeat.
Another opportunity for someone to hold the person they love.
I found myself contemplating the profound nature of that offering. How one life, even in its ending, can touch so many others. How the physical body, which carries us through this earthly journey, can become an offering of love beyond our own existence.
And somewhere within that contemplation, a doorway opened in me.
I found myself returning to a memory I have carried for fifty years.
The death of my mother.
I was twelve years old when she left this world.
Her lungs had become too compromised to sustain the breath of life. I remember her in that in between space, suspended between being here and no longer being here.
And I remember the little girl who could not understand.
How could my mother simply leave?
Where had she gone?
Why couldn't she stay?
At twelve, I had no understanding of a soul's journey or the greater mystery of life and death.
I only knew that I needed my mother.
And she was gone.
The grief of that moment became woven into the fabric of who I was becoming. A deep sense of abandonment. A longing that had nowhere to go. And at times, through the understanding of that little girl, even a feeling of betrayal.
How could someone who loved me so deeply leave me behind?
Of course, the woman I am today understands that my mother did not choose to abandon me.
But the child within me did not know that.
She only knew the absence.
And as I stood witnessing Isaiah's passing, I could feel that little girl rising within me once again.
Not to be healed through explanation.
Not to be told that everything happens for a reason.
But simply to be held.
To be seen.
To have her grief honored as part of her human experience.
And something began to shift within me.
I began to understand that grief is not something we are meant to leave behind or overcome. It becomes woven into the fabric of our soul, an expression of the love we have known, the connections we have shared, and the depth of our human experience.
Perhaps grief becomes part of the very landscape of our soul.
Not as a wound that must forever define us, but as something sacred that we learn to hold within the fullness of who we are.
The love remains.
The longing may remain.
And yet, our relationship to that loss can change as our consciousness deepens.
I have spent much of my life exploring the remembrance of the soul. The ways our experiences, our relationships, our ancestral stories, and even our deepest wounds invite us into a greater understanding of who we are.
And I have come to believe that our soul's purpose is not always revealed through the experiences we would have chosen.
Sometimes it is awakened through the very moments that bring us to our knees.
Through the loss that opens our hearts.
Through the questions that have no answers.
Through the surrender of believing we must understand everything in order to find meaning within it.
I cannot tell you why Isaiah's soul left when it did.
I cannot tell you why my mother's journey ended when I was only twelve.
And I would never want to diminish the pain of those experiences by suggesting that their deaths were necessary for someone else's awakening.
But I can honor what their lives, and their leaving, have awakened within me.
Because there is a difference between believing that everything happens for a reason and allowing ourselves to discover meaning within what has happened.
That distinction feels important to me.
It allows our grief to remain human.
It allows the mystery to remain sacred.
And it allows the soul to continue its journey of remembrance without needing to explain away the pain.
As I stood at Isaiah's threshold, I began to see my mother's passing through a different understanding.
The little girl within me could still grieve.
She could still long for her mother's embrace.
And the woman I am today could hold her within a greater field of love.
Both could exist.
The human heart and the knowing of the soul.
The grief and the gratitude.
The longing and the remembrance.
Perhaps this is part of what it means to become whole.
Not to transcend our humanity, but to embrace it so completely that even our grief has a place within the vastness of our being.
And then another understanding began to emerge.
When we stand close to death, something within us is asked to awaken to life.
We begin to recognize how much of our existence we spend waiting.
Waiting to become.
Waiting to heal.
Waiting for the right moment to speak our truth, express our love, follow the calling of our heart, or fully inhabit the life we have been given.
And yet, the breath we are taking in this very moment is life itself.
This is where our soul's purpose must be lived.
Not somewhere beyond us.
Not in a future version of ourselves.
But here.
Within the body.
Within our relationships.
Within the choices we make each day.
Within the love we are willing to give and receive.
I have come to understand that remembrance is not simply about knowing who we are as spiritual beings.
It is about having the courage to live that knowing through our human experience.
To allow our hearts to remain open even after they have been broken.
To speak the words we have been holding back.
To forgive where we are able.
To love without the illusion that anything in this physical world is ours to hold forever.
And to recognize that the sacredness of life is not separate from its impermanence.
Perhaps it is this very impermanence that invites us to become more present.
As I honor Isaiah and the memory of my mother, I feel something within me continuing to open.
Not because I have found the answers to the mystery of death.
But because I am learning to live more fully within the mystery of life.
To hold the twelve year old girl within me with tenderness.
To honor the woman I have become through all that I have lived.
And to remember that my soul's purpose is not something I must continue searching for outside myself.
It is something I am here to embody.
Through my presence.
Through my truth.
Through the love I bring into this world.
Perhaps this is one of the greatest gifts that standing at the threshold of death can offer us.
Not an answer to where the soul goes.
But a deeper remembrance of why we are here.
To live more fully.
To love more deeply.
To allow ourselves to be fully human while remembering the sacredness of the soul.
And to be fully here, while we are here.
An Invitation to Listen Within
Perhaps you, too, have experienced a moment when loss, grief, or the witnessing of another person's journey has opened something within you.
I invite you to sit quietly with these reflections. Not to search for the right answers, but to listen to what your soul may be asking you to remember.
What grief within me is asking to be held in love rather than explained away?
Is there a younger part of myself still carrying a loss, a longing, or a question that has never been answered? Can I allow that part of me to be witnessed with tenderness?
Where am I being invited to live more fully?
Are there places in my life where I am waiting, holding back, or postponing the expression of who I truly am? What would it feel like to begin living that truth today?
How is my soul asking me to embody love?
What words remain unspoken? What relationships are asking for my presence? What gifts, truths, or expressions of love am I ready to bring more fully into this world?
Perhaps the invitation is not to become someone new.
But to remember who we have always been.
And to allow that remembrance to become the way we live.
Kellie AmaLiana