We observe change daily. Our lives are interlocking cycles of change. Are we more connected with the earth and to each other than we consciously know? I like to believe this is so. Like puberty and our reproductive cycles, are souls programed to exit our physical bodies too? A biological time-clock counting down pre-programed, before we arrive in physical form? Simply and beautifully, I liken it to leaves when they detach and are blown off the tree? I promise more lightness next week, but today, I have been thinking about death all day. I was awake a 3, 4 and 5 am. At 5:15 am, I decided to get up and make a cup of coffee.

When I lived in Nacogdoches, Texas, I knew a lovely woman from Garrison. One day in conversation she said, that the “old timers” say, when the sap starts to fall many people leave; fall and winter were their busy seasons at the funeral home; that was 15 or more years ago, and I ruminate on that fact today. As I type these thoughts, my phone rings, it is my mother. She has been on my mind all day. I listen for a brief second. She is gripped by pain and grief-stricken; I hear her tears and her muddled words. She tells me her brother has just passed. They were very close. I want to put my arms around her but, she is 3000 miles away.

You do not choose when you are born or when you die, or do you? When I visited Seattle this summer, I spoke with my Uncle. He had had numerous health challenges – but seemed to be handling them in stride and his attitude with me was positive. One comment, however, even today, sticks in my mind. He said, “I told Doc Smith, that it was my quality of life that had taken a turn” then he quietly chuckled – he wasn’t happy about his new regiment of chemo. . . I bit my lip and just listened.

So, here we are three months later and I wonder. It takes nine months for a soul to arrive by birth – is that the preparation time? Does it take approximately nine months for a soul to transition out of this realm and back into another dimension where I believe we exist as pure energy and light and is truly our home? And, because of our modern societies fear and lack of understanding about this transition process, do we miss what our loved ones are really trying to tell us? And, the call to go or the call to come, are they really one and the same? At what moment do we innately know and hear that call? Uncle Carl was 85. Are souls like leaves when they detach and are blown off the tree by the wind? Are we really more like the wind – influenced by some “magnetic indicator” with a set-point? Sometimes a gentle breeze takes our leaves, bark, flowers and branches, and other times, it is more gale like forces that moves with voracious appetite and intention, sometimes even creating hurricanes of tremendous pressure, force and destruction with great suddenness. Are we the wind?

Or are we really more like light and color? Beautiful and yet undefinable by our consciousness? Are we like individual LED lights that light up the universe or like lightning bugs on a warm summer eve? The enigma between life and more life? Seen and unseen? What awaits on the other side of this veil? Our bodies attached to our soul and to our physicality; the inner and outer, earth and heaven, time and space to which we are tethered for a moment?

Most leaves fall in the autumn, but some like the live oak and madrona release their leaves all year. Is there a magnetic message tied and programmed to our DNA that sends a message and our call to leave? Is it the same one that calls the birds to fly south and the whales to migrate thousands of miles away and animals to have innate knowledge of their own world? Is it the same “voice” calling to us one by one? Does our soul get this call and pull and lift off one evening propelled by those same cosmic forces? What moves the world outside, moves within me too?

I know we are not simply biology, and we carry within a piece of this sacredness, divinity – a piece of God, and therefore could the instructions be carried in a magnetic portion of our DNA which is hidden and unknown to us? Does this also include our passage into and out of this world? Is it programmed with our life lessons – our growth – our healing – and some gift we give to another by our passing? In this case, my Mother. Her heart has opened wide, and just like many events in our lives, we are forever changed – also now programed within our DNA.

I bought a card earlier this week – It said, “When you are born, you are crying while everyone else it smiling. And, when you die, you are smiling while everyone else is crying.” If I have to make up anything, Uncle Carl is smiling – looking down on us all – and I hear him utter these words – “you are so right.” God Bless, you are dearly loved.

“Life never ends!  . . .  There is no fatalistic end with a final judgment resulting in eternal reward or punishment. In fact, there is no end. Life is ever expanding. Death is not a fearful experience to dread. What you term as death is a rebirth into your greater reality and in many ways is quite an exquisite, beautiful awakening. In truth, birth into the physical realm is far more traumatic than the return to the angelic realm. Indeed, passing from the physical may be appropriately described as “coming home.” Certain extraordinary expansions of reality are innate to being in a far wider horizon, one that offers much greater sensitivity and understanding . . . We urge you to seize the day, find joy, discover well-being, and know that every choice you make determines the life you live.”

— As channeled through James Tyberonn