When I was 18 years old, the fear of losing my parents overcame me. The terror faded when I realized that it would be much harder for them to lose a child. Eighteen years later, I faced the harsh reality from a broader and calmer perspective.
Growing up, my mom lent me all her fiction, self-help and non-fiction books. When I received the news of my father’s death, in early 2021, I leaned on all those books. They were a mainstay to keep me sane during a pandemic that had taken so many lives, including Dad’s.
I recently saw an interview with Isabel Allende where she talked about her most recent book, her marriage at 77, and the death of her daughter. She is definitely a woman of strength, courage and determination. Through fiction, she showed me how natural it is to live with spirits and, through non-fiction, she taught me that we can also recover from the greatest pain, because life continues – although not in the same way.
It’s interesting how everything around us shapes us over the years. The transformation never stops, and we gradually find the paths that identify more with who we are and who we want to be. Books have allowed me to know myself, have empathy, resilience and understand other people. It doesn’t matter if it’s a non-fiction story or if it has fictional characters, we can always learn something from those pages.
We gradually find the paths that identify more with who we are and who we want to be
I have seen others suffer the loss of a loved one with such great pain that it completely paralyzes their lives. I didn’t want to experience my dad’s death that way. For this reason, I opened myself to grief and what it could mean, but from a conscious position.
Author Vladimir Burdman says “Human beings fear death, it is a visceral fear, a very great fear of leaving this world and leaving their physical body”.
That phobia also extends to our loved ones, “even if their life is not pleasant or happy”. We seem to choose more often to be afraid of death more than to live fully.
Walking down a street of regrets will not bring Dad back. He will always be present through memories, teachings and anecdotes. His energy just transformed. “As we leave, we receive an elevation of our spiritual evolution,” comments author Maria Rowan in her book Whispers of a Heart from the Other Side.
My dad wasn’t perfect, he wasn’t the best or the worst. He was human, and he taught me how to be human. He was the kind of dad I needed: one present in my life, who supported my every step and gave me love. His last lesson was to let him go. While he was hospitalized, I decided to release control and respect his life and death process.
During 2020, I remembered Louise Hay’s book on gratitude and began to be grateful for the little things in my life. I felt liberated. The practice helped me to start 2021 and face tough challenges. Gratitude helped me realize that I am privileged and not a victim. I was able to enjoy my dad for quite some time; many people are not that lucky.
Gratitude showed me that we should not look for explanations in death, because there are none, the whys hurt us more. Meanwhile, the books on reincarnation gave me the hope I needed to really believe that something is beyond our understanding. Seeing the cycle of life with positivity helped me to think that there is no punishment, suffering or end. All the horror is in our mind, and we must learn to master it, to make it work in our favor.
This search through books is linked with the belief that death comes at the right time. Not before, not after. My dad, as a doctor, helped save many lives, but he also knew that in some cases there was nothing more he could do. We cannot obsess, cling and hurt others because we want to stay by their side forever.
If the world we want to see is chaotic, painful and evil, that is what we will experience. For many of us, it is an unfinished task to learn: our reality and the way we view life and death is up to us, as Brian Weiss explains in his book Miracles Exist, “He had to learn that the perception of life as a struggle was just an assumption… life is not just pain and suffering.”
Books, regardless of genre, have taught me about human nature. We all go through dark passages, but reality will depend largely on the perspective with which we view the world and the attitude with which we face challenges. In the end, even the Little Prince himself faced death to return to his planet. Although he was afraid, he gave us this last lesson, as well as so many others.
Images: NappyStock and Annelies Geneyn