How does one prepare for the coming storm of emotion? Whirlwinds of despair, tears fall down your face like heavy rain drops. Every child has the thought that their parents will die before. Some might consider it morbid to think but subconsciously we all have the thought. But how can you possibly prepare yourself for something like that? A parent or mother/father figure dying is such a life changing moment in one’s life happening expectantly or unexpectedly.

What many people do not realize or fail to recognize is when someone close in your life passes away, it causes you to look at your own mortality. Call it selfish or your ego, but some part of you sees another person’s flame of life extinguished by the cold hand of death causing you to look inward at your own perishability. Our mortality is such a stigma in today’s enlightened society, people shy away from talking about it, though we all will go through it someday.

Thinking about such questions makes you wonder, are we just meat puppets slowly on our way to the slaughterhouse of fate? Does our consciousness continue to live on when our bodies finally give way? Evolutionary, are we supposed to even be here or have we disrupted the natural order of the world? It is these questions that arise when we consider our own mortality, which every human being has considered at one point in his or her life.

But how can you prepare for such an event in your life? Truthfully, you cannot; what I can tell you is the pain is only temporary. We as a people rally from death; gathering with people we love, reminiscing about past memories, growing stronger through the pain and grief. But a part of you also wonders, could things have been different? Is there something I could have done to perhaps prevent or slow this from happening?

This is your ego talking once again. The fact is perhaps things could have been different, but it was not for you to decide. One’s mortality is directly correlated with the choices that person has made in their life. Considering what you could have done will only prolong your pain resulting in you never allowing yourself to heal. Realize they are gone, live your life with the memories you cherish of that person. The past is there for a reason: to remind you of where you have come from and how far you’ve gone to make it to now.

The inevitability of it is that everyone’s journey is going to come to an end at some point. Though some more swiftly than others, we cannot plan for what comes. What I have learned is that it is not about the beginning or the end of one’s life. It is simply about the journey in between these two correlating points. Open yourself up to new experiences, continuing to learn and expand your consciousness to infinite heights. You decide the course of your life--not anyone else--and all you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to you.