The Un-Dead

This is one of those rare years when the Western Christian and Eastern Orthodox Easter celebrations fall on the same day. The news media, ever alert these days to the gathering of crowds in the middle east, report that it is creating a bit of choas in Jerusalem. Extraordinary crowds of pilgrims seek to retrace the Via Delorosa or stand within the Church of the Holy Sepulcher as Sunday's light dawns. Mass movements need to be carefully choreographed. Yet, though swept along with the crowd, each pilgrim is on an individual journey: to consider and better comprehend the permeability of the boundary between life and death. Half a world away, we can ponder with them.
Theologians use the term "resurrection"; more simply we ask, "Can the dead live?"
The scientist within wants to insist that dead is dead and that the siren song of denial must itself be denied. I visit the tombs of my father, mother, sister, aunts, uncles, friends and no stone is rolled back. They are where I saw them last-- laid to rest--undisturbed--that's it--finis! Why then, even as I stand there, looking at their names and dates inscribed in stone, do they all seem so alive within me?
I suspect that for others as well as myself, the dead are not so dead either. There is a portion of my consciousness where all these familiar folk have set up house. At a moment's lapse, I am through their door. I see them, they speak, even dialogue with me in tones I recognize and in settings I have experienced. Close my eyes in sleep and they are likely to meander through my dreams, sit there alongside as I relive my day, offering their unsolicited opinions. They seem as influential as ever, perhaps even more so. When I am awake, I seem to be their vehicle of expression, adopting their habits, employing their attitudes, indulging in their emotions. Like the cats who snuggle into bed with me at 4:00AM, I love them dearly, but crave my own space.
We are far more than the sum of our genes and influences. Deliniating one's own particular parameters of spirit and self is necessary and worthy work. Thankfully, Love, Loss and Forgiveness makes that work a deliberate conscious process. Confrontations and conversations that might have happened [had not circumstances and human frailty intervened] are given expression and hearing in safe settings so that we are freed to focus on the life we live rather than the life we might have lived. In a sense, the permeable boundary is re-crossed. Grateful for what we have been bequested, we move onward toward greater self-appreciation and self-responsibility. And that feels very much like becoming un-dead.