Being a Carreon

Rinpoche hasn't aged one bit, in the 31 years I have known him, he just seems the same to me. Every year I think, it's been too long, he is getting old now, I should find a way to see him. He used to look down on my tiny little self and ask me, "who ARE you?" Just like the blue caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland, he repeated it every time he saw me. I knew he was playing a game with me, I knew this had something to do with my being born into the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. Despite my never having the true answer to his question, Rinpoche smiled because he knew I was responding deep within myself. I was asking myself, who am I?

I am defiantly religious. Not even just spiritual, I embrace religion even as I recognize what it does to people and how vehemently people hate it. Now when I see Rinpoche in the grocery store, he says "you have been bad." He says it as a fact, he says it with wide open eyes that I do not understand but I truly love. I must always love Rinpoche, and respect him, no matter how harsh and unforgiving circumstances have been.

When Josh died...Josh died...a piece of me went out in search of him. It looked up into the night sky and it rode on a breath of wind. This piece of me caressed the words of a song, believing that they could be Josh's words, somehow reaching out to me if only I could read the pattern, the words beneath the words. Friends walked by my side, they walked with me as I sought some totem for the box that would hold him for a moment. Something that would burn with him. Perhaps this totem would touch his spirit, meld with it and follow him into the afterlife. Protect him.

I found Rinpoche. Sometimes it is hard to find him, but he was there. It had been years since I saw him. Years that I spent numbing my brain and hiding from any sort of responsibility. But Rinpoche was there when I needed him. I kneeled on the floor before him and I handed him the prayer that I had pulled from one of my prayer books. This prayer had been with me since I was a child. I had fallen in love with that prayer. It went...

"In the Buddhafield of Infinite Appearance
No one exists who is not sublime
The names of samsara and the six realms do not exist
May we born in the Buddhafield of Infinite Appearance."

Rinpoche asked me what it was, and when I told him the title he said, "ahh, Dewachen." Almost surprised he seemed, approving. In that moment I realized that prayer had been with me all these years for this single purpose. Rinchoche said his prayers over it. He did this with tenderness, for me, knowing that more than his magic touch it was this moment...my own supplication...that mattered.

Mom, dad, Maria and I stood over Josh's husk, that precious, delicate husk that dad alone had tended to so we would not see the painfully severe mark that the steering wheel had left on his forehead. We stood before Joshua's empty form and we were silent. His body felt like wood, and I wondered how this was possible for the absence of life to transform the human form so suddenly and irreversibly. I held my prayer in my hands and recited it. We recited it together, Maria, dad and I. Mom was silent as we did our small ritual. What else could we do? I placed the prayer on Josh's chest, and a white stone. That was all I could do.

Like Rinpoche's question, there is no answer. Only reaching for what could be, might be, should be, once was. Where does my sorrow go when it is absent? And how does it take a hold of me so quickly? And what is it that I have lost? Will it ever be recovered, and why was it taken from me?

He was more than the sum of his parts. He was more than a 30-year-old artist with long hair and a wry smile. He was more than a brother, a friend, a son, a lover. He was more. He was everything and nothing.