Blogging, Bereavement and the Natural Order of Things

I started Ketchup with Aubs primarily for my parents. Pa is hopeless on computers, but Ma is slowly getting there. She checks up on me every 5 months or so.

Its secondary function was so i wouldn´t keep having to repeat myself to global friends who write emails and ask what i have been up to. Again, the blog-site has failed again.

However, despite completely failing in both these aspects, it has definitely been worth it.

In 18 months it has had more than 9000 hits from more than 100 countries, has been adopted by Lonely Planet for their Blog-Sherpa program, and, more importantly personally, it has renewed my interest in writing for pleasure.

Most special though, is that it has put me in contact with “strangers”. I quite regularly get some very touching messages from readers. Most are from travellers or people who have spent considerable time either in Dharamsala or on the Indian sub-continent who thank me for the sense nostalgia it brings them. I´m genuinely touched that it brings such pleasure to people i have never met.

Now a regular correspondent with me is J, an elderly woman in Los Angeles who travelled India on several occasions in her younger travelling days. We have become Facebook friends as well, and she shares pictures of her beautiful children and grandchildren.

J also Twitters, and this week she mourns the 30th anniversary of the death of Wendy, her still-born daughter. It is a short, but most touching and poignant Tweet, and i feel the awkwardness of knowing how to respond to her.

I send her my heart-felt condolences and promise to dedicate a full prayer-wheel spinning kora for her family (which i did yesterday).

on the kora

I contemplate on her loss.

One of Buddhism´ s central beliefs revolves around the impermanence of everything. But even to far more enlightened beings than myself, is still hurts. Bereavement is one of the more stressing and painful processes we all eventually have to go through.

What seems to make J´s loss greater is that the loss of a child appears to be against “the natural order of things”. I cannot begin to imagine the distress of burying ones own child.

"Shit Happens" is a truism, but does not bring much comfort.

Blessings to you and your family J.