Death: It’s A Seed
Set forth in motion to achieve a greater purpose
This post is a response to a neighbor who recently lost his child of 19 years abruptly without any convincing reason.
“Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.”
John 12:24 NIV
My father passed away in 2022. Until he lived, even though he was back in India, I never felt orphaned. He always had my back. But after my engineering which I did for his sake and didn’t really learn anything from or use it to produce anything much, I had effectively wasted a good merit seat in college, I lived as a homemaker for 22 years because I didn’t find value in doing anything in life that seemed useful to this world.
It’s not that there isn’t any job that is useful to this world, there are many. However I felt that I could not take on any of them because I had children at home and felt that my first and foremost responsibility belonged to them and so I didn’t even look to find out how I can contribute to the world. I didn’t have any goals, any plans beyond taking care of them. But I had this deep yearning to do something to be useful to this world. I always wanted to do something to help this world become a better place for everybody to live in.
So, one year before he passed away, on Father’s Day I promised my dad that I will do something with my life but I still didn’t know how I was going to accomplish it. I didn’t have any plans at that time either. I just felt strongly that I owe to him and myself to do this for myself. To become a somebody in this world.
Then my dad became sick and in one year he passed away. Lung cancer. He never smoked in his life. Air pollution where he lived seems to be the reason. Otherwise there is no explanation. It took me one whole year to get over his loss. There were so many days when I would cry aloud and the cry would come out like a song. With rhythm. I couldn’t believe it. I’ve seen this played out in movies. But I used to think they did it to make it watchable. I didn’t know the truth behind it. Even melancholy has music. And so does grief!
But after one year, his loss gave me power to rise beyond my situations. His loss coupled with my circumstances at the time made me to really think hard and decide that I should go back to college and study something that I can use to make the world a better place. I didn’t know at that time what would be a good fit for me. But all the incidents I had met with in my life had prepared me for this moment. Unbeknownst to me.
And all the circumstances that happened then also put me in a precarious position so that I had to take this up. And then there were more incidents that paved the way to show me exactly what God had planned for me. I wrote another post about that. It can be accessed at Freedom: It Takes Away the Numbed Mind
So, finally I am getting ready for what lies ahead in my life and it all happened only because my dad passed. No kidding! It’s for real. There is meaning even in death. Hope you will find yours also soon!
So sorry for your loss!
Sincerely,
Shalini
Your son deserves something from you to give meaning to his death!
Loss is a part of evolving. we loose our innocence while growing up, we loose our sanity in crisis and then learn. just that one void needs to be filled by another one till it becomes void. the journey continues....