Trust me, I'm an Expert

You might not want to read this. Especially if you are at work.



March 2nd, 9:00am EST, twenty hours after she was diagnosed with pneumonia, my aunt Jill Jameson passed away. I don't know how old she was. I know how old she was. She was too young to die. But she did anyway, because this particularly virulent strain of pneumonia would not relent on her asthmatic lungs. Twenty hours after just having a cold, she had died. In that twenty hours she suffered from a collapsed lung, became septic, and passed.

Aunt Jill was my Dad's sister, and she took his passing very hard. They were buddies, even though for the majority of my formative years I thought they were sworn enemies. Not a single family holiday passed without Dad and Jill getting political. She was the Colmes to his Hannity. But she respected his hard-assed black-and-white world view, and he loved that his little sister could be, in his eyes, so adorably naive.

She was possibly the most compassionate member of my family, which is why in the early 90's when Dad went into rehab to get sober he sent us to live with Jill. She was amazing. It was a circumstance that was difficult on all of us, and could have been terribly depressing. She somehow made it incredible. I will  never forget her bedroom-turned-art studio. She was a great lover of art. For hours Lauren and I would create mosaics, draw, sculpt. I did not realize at the time how deeply therapeutic it was. I look back on those months with great fondness.  She never knew how much that time meant to me.

Jill leaves a husband Lenny, son Adam, daughter Leese, granddaughter Evelyn, and two siblings. I ache for them more than myself. I was not as close to Jill as they were. They are the ones who need comforting.

It seems a cruel fate to befall my family, two tragic and sudden deaths separated by less than six months. I can assure you it isn't fate. It is life. Blaming the will of some unseen cosmic figure is what puts people in asylums.

Then Almitra spoke, saying, "We would ask now of Death." And he said: You would know the secret of death. But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life? The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot unveil the mystery of light. If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life. For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one. In the depth of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond; And like seeds dreaming beneath the snow your heart dreams of spring. Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity. Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honour. Is the sheered not joyful beneath his trembling, that he shall wear the mark of the king? Yet is he not more mindful of his trembling? For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun? And what is to cease breathing, but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered? Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing. And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb. And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance. Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet. Jameson family favorite. 

JJJ