Remember Meta
“…when we finally know we are dying, and all other sentient beings are dying with us, we start to have a burning, almost heartbreaking sense of the fragility and preciousness of each moment and each being, and from this can grow a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings.” –Sogyal Rinpoche
A year ago today, a beautiful young woman named Meta died in a traffic accident. How quickly, and how slowly, these years of awful counting pass by — one day becomes 20 becomes 365 becomes 27 years in the batting of an eyelash that both flitters very fast and pauses full of tears to slow, slow, slow as the heavy black fringe of a surrey drips a raindrop with each step. How very cruel, that space between open and closed.
Just 20 years old, cells full of living that never even opened, life’s living lost, at least in this form that we can laugh with and touch and gaze into and keep from falling and watch grow up and grow old. Meta’s death brought many lessons.
On this sad and important anniversary, a threshold of sorts into life without her physically here, please remember her in a way that honors the gifts her story brought us.
Light a significant candle for her and for her mom, Mary Anne, diagnosed with breast cancer just three months after Meta’s death and still battling the disease along with her incomparable loss.If the effort is too big for every day, just live this one day every year as if today might be your last, marking it on your calendar each September 14th with the word "Meta," to remind yourself. Hug your loved ones each time they leave the house on this day. Grow a deep, clear, limitless compassion for all beings on this day. Acknowledge the vulnerability we all face daily and live fully saying yes yes yes in spite of it. Please remember Meta; otherwise she is too gone, as we all could be. Forever hold your penguin dear. Live as if your life depended on it.
