Shimmering Lights

The art of dying is the art of attaining absolute life.

Die as a drop and become the ocean.

– Osho

Something shiny on the surface of the water attracted her attention. She couldn’t see what it was; it was shimmering slightly, probably an object of some kind. She felt drawn to get a closer look, but she knew that the water got deep quickly; the river was dangerous. She was scared that if she went in too far, the current would take hold of her and not let go – similar to the current of emotions presently running through her.

As if pulled by an invisible magnet, she slowly stepped into the water. She felt the sand squelching between her toes. The water was cold, transporting her back to a dream in which she had felt a similar frostiness. An icy wind blew, and the smell of snow was in the air. She felt it in her bones, she was freezing alive. She had dreamt of running until she had been out of breath, without any notion of whether she was running towards or away from somewhere, or if she was even running at all. The emotion was familiar, an overwhelming need to return to the source, to return to her roots, a longing to come home. But not the home of her daily life, a deeper, truer kind of home, setting her free of the coldness in her bones.

She looked at her feet; the water ran over them at great speed, giving her pause. A quote from Heraclitus came to her mind: ‘No man ever steps in the same river twice.’ Without thinking, she finished speaking out loud, “…for it is not the same river and he’s not the same man.” She held her breath, waiting, but only the dark empty water replied.

“It’s impossible to recapture the past. Just one moment is enough to take a life forever,” she said, thinking of her baby again, as she did every second in the day, unable, or rather unwilling to let go.

The day she had found out life was growing inside of her had been the happiest of her life. With her husband, she had created a miracle in its purest form; they were going to have a baby. She had been fulfilled to the most intimate core of her being, through the mystery of conception.

She no longer imagined such happiness taking over her womb.

“We will give our child everything we have,” her husband said. He couldn’t stop smiling or touching her stomach, it was embarrassing. But she didn’t mind, she loved her husband’s strong hands caressing her growing belly. She felt him caressing the child from the outside while she touched it from the inside. Finding out they were having a baby-girl was a bolt of pure joy. She had named her daughter long before she had been conceived.

“Don’t tell your father, but your name is Charlotte,” she whispered quietly to her bulging belly. She had always been full of admiration for the eldest of the Brontë sisters.

“You’ll be a little bit me, a little bit him, and a whole lot yourself.” She was happy, even as her feet swelled to twice their size and her back was killing her.

She shook her head to get rid of the cobwebs, but the apprehension in her stomach persisted. Back then, she had unconsciously embraced the change, the change in her body, her mind, the alteration of her entire existence. She had no idea of its meaning, how could she? But now, looking at the water, change saddened her. Now she knew that dreams of fulfillment, of returning to the source were just that, dreams. It didn’t matter how quick or how far one would run, there was no sanctuary, no chance for recovery – and it hurt more than she could bear.

She waded deeper into the water, it reached her arms, her shoulders. The water was pitch black and she could only imagine what was below the surface. She pictured huge fish with sharp teeth, snakes with multiple arms and eyeless monsters with a strong appetite for soft flesh, her flesh. She shuddered at the thought and the iciness of the water.

The current was getting stronger, pulling at her legs and feet. She still felt the soft sand below, but she knew that she would lose touch with the ground, the same way she had lost touch with everything else. She wasn’t ready yet and wondered if she ever would be. But alongside her fear, she craved the unknown silence waiting for her.

The bloody cramps began one night when she was home alone, her husband out of town. She knew instinctively that this was the end of her daughter’s life, and hers as well. But as her daughter lay on a cold slab in the morgue awaiting an autopsy, she was doomed to continue breathing, eating and pretending to be alive. Her husband, who had been caressing the baby from the outside, could not fully understand her loss of feeling their daughter move, of feeling her presence every moment of the day. She had been the guardian of her daughter’s well-being. She would feel her baby’s discomfort because mummy slept in the wrong position, she would sense her child’s mild nausea because mummy ate something bad, and she felt her baby’s pain when her life ended. Every fiber of her daughter was deeply rooted within her.

Letting go of her daughter meant disappearing herself.

After the loss of her baby, she knew that returning to her old self was impossible. There was no way to rekindle her sweet disposition and joyful beliefs she had manifested every second of every day. She had been called a hopeless dreamer and a force of nature. People had loved her for her optimism which had attracted her husband in the first place. But the creature hopefully believing in the rightfulness of existence had bled out together with her baby.

Living her life for the sake of others had worn her to the bone. She had tried too many times, to rediscover a fragrance of her former self, in vain. It was too late, change had taken hold of her, permanently. Her old self had been replaced by a hollow, freakishly quiet person no longer interested in what tomorrow might bring. Her daughter’s death was the obstacle holding her back from life.

An obstacle as strong as the current pulling her into this river.

She felt the softness of the water touch her skin. The water surrounded her; water was everywhere, and she relaxed. Giving in to the pull, she turned onto her back to float on the water. Her eyes looked up at the sky and she saw a perfectly round moon. Its light was reflected on the surface of the water, glimmering with the fragrance of hope. She now understood the origins of the shimmering light which had lured her into the river, it had been the reflection of a moonlit night.

Only she knew the reason she had come here. Everyone else, including her husband, believed her life still to be worthwhile.

“I know it hurts, but don’t give up,” they said.

“You have so much more to reach for,” they insisted.

“Don’t throw away the gift of existence,” they told her.

“You owe it to us, to yourself to hang in there,” they tried to convince her.

“Wait for good things to come,” they nodded in agreement.

She had listened and tried to live life as expected. She had welcomed the brutal anger and destructive hatred which had coursed through her shortly after the incident. It made the days go by and she felt sort of alive, alone in the darkness of her soul. She had acquiesced. She was waiting.

But when the anger had run its course, the emptiness settled in and grew larger every day, filling every nook of her being, leaving no place for anything else. The emptiness had no color, no taste, no smell. She was numb, even when she hurt. She was erased and it was absolute.

“If only there was something, anything,” she thought, desperately hungry for the slightest feeling, for sorrow, for anger, even for pain. But there was nothing other than emptiness.

She needed to act, regardless of the consequences.

Drifting on the water, she dared to think of her husband, to imagine his feelings, his loss. She knew that he believed that she had stopped loving him, that she blamed him for losing their daughter, but he was wrong. She wanted to continue to love, to cherish him, but the hollow feeling inside her belly made it impossible. And she knew that the hole she felt could not be filled, not by him.

“Please listen, listen to me,” she heard him say, looking at her in distress. “We can be happy again, we can. Maybe when you’re better, we can try again for another baby. We’re still young enough, and it will work this time.”

It broke her heart. Try as she might, she couldn’t explain that continuing her life only with him or, God forbid, with another baby, was unthinkable. He couldn’t understand that life without her daughter was no longer enough. He hadn’t touched their daughter the same way she had, from the warmth and coziness inside her belly. The imagined smell of her baby would never leave her nostrils. She saw her, day in and day out, wherever she was.”

‘There is something beautiful in loss,’ she thought, looking at the water breaking the moon light into a thousand waves. ‘How it brokenly holds the pieces of our life together. A shattered life with jagged edges bound together by nothing but memories. A great love that pulsates through our veins, undeniable, yet unaware. A love that connects us despite time, distance or death.’

‘Death has forgotten to tell my heart that it has stopped by,’ she thought, realizing that death didn’t mean redemption or resolution, it was no promise for hope. Love just kept on trudging forward, day after day after day, without reason.

And the heart kept on aching for what it didn’t know was gone.

The current pulled her away from the shore and into the middle of the stream. She couldn’t believe how strong and overpowering the water felt. It took all her strength to start swimming and to keep her head above water. She wondered if she would soon lose the fight against the elements. Twisted and turned from one side to the other, the waves crashed over her head. She had to use all her strength to keep her head above water.

“Soon,” she answered the questions of the waves.

Turning her head towards the riverbank, she could see the forest, it looked miles away. The trees rushed by at an unimaginable speed. Her journey felt surreal, and she didn’t recognize the landscape. There were some lights in the distance and for a brief moment she wondered how she came to be here.

Her arms and legs were getting tired, too heavy to continue the fight. The water pulled at her, and the current wouldn’t let up pushing her forward, sideways, and finally below the surface. There was a moment of panic when she realized that she would drown. She quickly raised her head above the water, but the current pulled her back under, again and again. She had a hard time breathing. The stones she had put in her pockets before stepping into the river dragged her down. She felt the energy leave her body.

‘Just let go, why don’t you?’ she told herself. But she didn’t feel ready yet; she was waiting for something though she didn’t know for what. Truly sensing the closeness of death made her hesitate.

She knew people would judge her and be angry with her, especially the people close to her heart. In their pain, they would think that she had given in to her despair instead of trying to seek help.

‘Maybe they are right,’ she thought. ‘Maybe there is a different way, for me, for us.’ She wondered if she was just giving in to fear. Thoughts rushed at her at lightning speed, but she was not able to see a way out.

She knew there were positive things in her life she would miss, like her loved ones, her life’s work, the belief in the possibility of hope.

‘Am I fooling myself?’ she wondered, ‘Should I wait for things to change, for better this time?’

Coming up for air once again, she saw a branch in front of her and in a split-second decision, she grabbed onto it and held fast. She managed to stay above water long enough to catch her breath and slowly pulled herself along the branch to the edge of the river.

She felt her feet gain ground and let go of the branch to claw herself out of the water. But she hadn’t realized just how smooth the sand below her feet was. She slipped and fell back into the river, the current quickly pulling her away from the shore. In a hurry, she pulled the stones from her pockets and dropped them into the water. The stones ripped the shimmering surface and sunk to the ground, and with each stone, she felt the burden on her shoulders lighten. The weight left her body and her mind.

Once again, she surrendered to the water.

She closed her eyes and heard a nightingale’s song pierce the darkness of the night bringing a glimmer of hope to her heart. She had to smile at the memory of her husband’s voice, talking about their daughter, promising her happiness.

“I am, I will be happy again,” she told him, hoping he could hear. She imagined a place where the sun would warm their bones and dry their tears. She had to smile, even if it was just fantasy.

Taking a deep breath, she whispered, “Love continues always.” Her head slowly sank below the surface. Her body was too weak to fight any longer, and so was her soul. Surrendering to the elements, she said good-bye to the river, to her life.

The river was still again; there was nothing but the shimmering light reflecting the moon.

Excerpted from A Drop of Death by Bhakta Angelika Lorenz

Quote by Osho from Death Is Divine, Ch 1

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• A Drop of Death: dancing your way to farewell – a presentation by the author, Bhakta A. Lorenz, of her first published book, with three short reviews

A Drop of Death
dancing your way to farewell
by Bhakta A. Lorenz – angielor@protonmail.com
233 pages
Independently published January 15, 2024
ISBN: 9798873687091
ASIN: B0CSGMJPB6
available as Paperback and Kindle: Amazon* worldwide