Our lives are full of curious and mysterious things, and I’m quite certain what came before our birth and after our death will reveal even more curious and mysterious things, each, possibly, as breathtakingly beautiful as the coming together and parting of starlings during murmuration.

Two years ago I wrote about the talks I had with a dying friend about walking through that door called death “full of curiosity,” quoting a poem about death by Mary Oliver that we both loved. And, before that parting, we wanted to live our lives here on earth as “a bride married to amazement, taking the world into her arms.”

Recently I came across two more beautiful and tender poems that talk about that transition in ways that resonate with me. The first is by a best-selling Filipino poet Michelle Ayon Navajas, whose blog I follow. The second is a prose poem I found on a website I love called Read a Little Poetry And the last is that Mary Oliver poem I referenced earlier.

Death

by Michelle Ayon Navajas

death is the next great adventure—
a doorway quietly swung wide;
not the last line in a fading chapter,
but the shift of an eternal tide.
it comes not as a thief in darkness,
nor a lullaby of something lost,
but as a gentle touch reminding
every journey has to end.

fear it not as final silence,
nor as cold oblivion’s claim;
for even the dark holds tender wonders
that no waking words can name.
and when the veil at last is lifted,
we’ll step through without pretense—
not ending, but becoming,
in a world that makes new sense.

After You Toss Around the Ashes

by Ada Limón

When she was dying, it was impossible to see forward to the next minute. What was happening — for whole weeks — was all that was happening and happening and happening. Months before that, I got the dumb soup wrong. How awful. It was all she wanted and I had gotten it wrong. Then, in the airless days when it was really happening, we started to power panic that we didn’t know enough. What should we do with your ashes? Water or dirt. Water or dirt. Once, she asked to just be thrown into the river where we used to go, still alive, but not living anymore. After it was done, I couldn’t go back to my life. You understand, right? It wasn’t the same. I couldn’t tell if I loved myself more or less. It wasn’t until later, when I moved in with him and stood outside on our patchy imperfect lawn, that I remembered what had been circling in me: I am beautiful. I am full of love. I am dying.  

When Death Comes

by Mary Oliver

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox;

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

I ended that tribute to my dying friend with this wish, which I wish for all of us:

Go gently, my friend, into that goodnight, into this mystery that wraps around us and hides so much, our comings and goings. Pierce the veil that we all will face someday, that separates this time-bound sense of existence from the eternal round from which we sprang.

What will we see on the other side? Could it be less miraculous than what we see now?

Till then, I’ll look for you in the starlings’ murmur, in the whale’s rising, in our shared granddaughter’s laughter, in all the things bright and beautiful we cherish in the here and now.

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A Christmas Gift

A mother vanishes, a family unravels. Three journeys to wholeness unfold in this poignant & propulsive tale of love and longing. Get swept up in the emotional currents that bind us all. 

When Things Go Missing is on sale through the holidays on Amazon in e-book and print. Gift one to a friend, or to yourself.