Death & Taxes: What My Dad’s Death Taught Me

Part One: Death… The Unknown. A final chapter. Loss.

Perhaps there are good reasons for which we don’t deal with death well – if we know how to deal with it at all. Perhaps there is a reason we don’t know how to cope. We don’t know what happens afterwards, though I was told by physicists in my early twenties that death was the end, there was nothing after your body dies. Ironically, they didn’t account for the fact that Einstein said that energy is never destroyed or lost; you have to account for your energy. If you don’t believe in energy, then you just haven’t had certain experiences to illustrate, show you and put you in a place beyond doubt that energy IS.

I’m Kalyn and I recently learned some about that  unknown when I went down to my father’s funeral, where I stayed with this sweet, comforting pup and family. This trip tapped me into a lot of the unknown aspect of death.

But Death? People Freak Out!

Fourteen years-ago when my father-in-law passed on, everyone had nothing but wonderful things to say about him and they were very loving with one-another. Everything went dark with his adult children when it came time to the will and the inheritance. Sticks, stones and threats flew faster than hawks after a kill. My sister-in-law had the same experience when her dad died when she was only 12. Her father’s family left her mother and children in a poor financial situation and dragged the will through the courts for over a decade.

Why do people freak out? Why do their worst sides come out? Why, all of a sudden, are they acting desperate, fighting over the deceased possessions and money? Why can’t people let go of their beloved, carrying the pain of loss for many years to follow?

Our modern world does little to appreciate life, wisdom or to understand the process of death. For this reason, people perceived death and deal with it at their lowest-vibrating selves. Let’s change that.

My Story: Dealing The News

I haven’t been around death a whole lot, and, although I’ve lost all my grandparents, I wasn’t living near them so I didn’t see them very much when they passed on. Their death’s saddened me, but didn’t hit me as hard. My dad’s death this year was the first one that I feel I’ve really experienced and that really hit home.

My dad was in his upper 70’s, which didn’t make it easier, but it also didn’t feel like life ‘robbed’ him too early. He lived a full life and I sense no regrets. Actually, he kinda went out with a bang! See, he was a university professor and he’d taken half a sabbatical so he’d been living in Spain with his wife for his last six months. He ended his sabbatical and the year by spending time visiting my brother’s family and then mine at Christmas. So, his last six months were like a good-bye tour. No, he had no terminal disease, though he was having heart issues, but nothing to tell us that the end was near. However, his Christmas visit was ‘softer,’ more focused on enjoying life, enjoying his family; just being with us. It had been a couple of years since we’d gotten together, since we live in different countries, so he hadn’t seen my second obsession, my flock of parrots and he took to them. I hadn’t seen him around animals in many years; he was a veterinarian, and this time, with my Caique on his shoulder, I saw his animal ‘magic.’ It was clear that my parrots new he was an animal person, a super-animal person. It was a sweet Christmas. I’ve recently come to know that the “sweetness” came from the shedding of his life-cloak.

A couple weeks later in January I received a call that my dad had gone to the ER. He’d been told that he needed heart surgery, but refused. Interesting. I spoke to him on the phone and he told me that the doctor was going to have to find another guinea pig! Two days later, the next call was that he hadn’t made it alive to the hospital.

Tears. And more tears.

I immediately made plans to go to the funeral.

Death Or Shedding The Life Cloak: One of Life’s Major Stresses

I’m pretty sure that between my morning phone call about my dad’s passing and my arriving at the funeral home that night in Mexico City, I stepped into the Twilight Zone. Weird shit happened left, right in my face and center-stage over the next several days until I came home.

I met my brother and his wife at the airport. Her sister and husband picked us up and drove us to the funeral home where, I was informed, we’d spend the next 24 plus hours. No sleep for the mourners… Ok, well, I go with the flow. I was surprised to walk into a fair-sized room and find more family members all in one room than I had ever seen at a time. I hadn’t seen some of my cousins and uncles or aunts in a decade, in two decades, in three. Twilight Zone. I didn’t think they were that close to my dad… Some family feuds no longer existed.. Weird-twilight. Some family I hadn’t seen looked and acted different. Strange-Zone.

My uncle and some other family members had already been there for 24 hours and stayed with us for the next 24. I was told this was typical in Mexico- I’m not familiar with the customs having lived here (US) just about all my life. My father’s funeral -dash- family reunion was helpful in grieving for me. I spent time thinking about my dad, but I was also distracted seeing family and talking with them after all this time. Around 1 or 2 am we sprawled out on the couches and slept for three hours. I was tired enough not to sense anything and just sleep. Sleeping at the funeral home with the body in the room… Twilight Zone for me.

In Mexico bodies are, customarily, cremated – which I think they do because there is no real estate for cemeteries. The next day everyone said good-bye to the body right before it was taken to be cremated, which was odd to me because I had been saying good-bye in my way already. It was an open-casket funeral so everyone went up to see the body and his wife pushed me to go up to the casket. Thing is, that just didn’t work for me. The photo of my dad with my Caique shows him, it gives you a sense of him. The body left behind after he exited was like an empty cocoon. It no longer had his luster or his spark and I did not like seeing it or being told that this was him. It was like only seeing the movie credits after the movie and being told that was the movie. No, it’s missing the soul’s story.

No, his life-cloak was gone and all that remained was an empty shell.

In the next Parts:

What is a life-cloak?

Do you get to choose when you die?

What did I find about