Death is a doorway

Rose had 5 children, and 10 grandchildren. 
Of the grandchildren, I am number 6. 
—As many of you know, I have had the unfortunate opportunity of being very close to death in the last few years. Today, I am grateful for this chance to speak to my family about what I have learned.
***Death is a doorway.***
And last week, our beloved Rose walked through it.
—At 95, Rose lived a proper life. 
And even though, i KNEW she would leave us soon, 
it’s been hard for me to fathom the truth ——- the physical “her” is no longer. 
For all of my time on earth, my grandmother has been the same thing. 
A constant, a certain, a writer of cards, a clipper of newspaper articles. A reader. A social butterfly. She was always the picture of class and decorum. In my life, she was always a grown up. 
The other truth that is hard for me to understand is that she was not just the person I saw as my grandmother. 
In her long life, Rose was many things to many people. 
Her life was made up of millions of moments--
—-some perfect, happy and easy and others ugly and hard, and so many moments in between. 
Rose lived all of these moments and is the sum of all those parts. 
In her life, she changed, grew, evolved. She  made mistakes—- she worked to correct them, she worked to understand them, 
—to understand her ancestry. 
—She fought to unravel her story. --
For she was never a single rose, but many, many roses — 
****from bud to bloom to wilt to thorn to bud and bloom again.***
Last week, Rose fulfilled her purpose, finished her story and walked through the doorway of death to bloom again on the other side. 
***********************
—With her passing, there is an opening for all of us, a moment of transition, —— an internal AND external restructuring of our worlds.  For death is also a doorway for the living.

 When my grandfather George passed, I stood in this room and read a poem about grief by an unknown author aloud to many of you. As I walked away from the podium, I was changed. 

At that moment, I knew that when this day came—- When rose passed, I would write my own words to express what she meant to me. 
George’s death was a doorway that I walked through to become a writer. And the doorway, I needed to realized how important family relationships are to me and that I would need to WORK to nurture them. 

When my daughter River died, I realized the truly transformative power of death. From River’s story, I learned that--
— not all moments are equal, 
—not all lives are long like Rose’s. 
—That we have incredible control over  many aspects of our story, but there are no guarantees of a tomorrow. 
—we are all many things. Some obvious, accessible and blooming.
—And other things that are deeper—-hidden within us, waiting for their chance to flower. 

Rose’s passing is an immense loss. There is nothing to replace her. But I can tell you with all certainty that this is a doorway for each of us to grow into what is next—- and today, we are standing in this doorway together, as a family, as a community of people who loved Rose. 
Where we go from here is our hands, her legacy—-her story, it is our story to write now.  Her death is the doorway to the rest of our lives.