Six years ago today my sister Darlene left this plane for yet another one. It seems like it was an eternity ago and also yesterday. It’s an odd feeling. Darlene was an amazing soul who was a Healer/Chiropractor. I admired what she did because it furthered me along on my spiritual path. It was Darlene that introduced me to things like Bach Remedies and the holistic world. It was her that I would call when in need of council. I remember vividly living in Boulder, Colorado getting my car worked on and spending an hour or so on the phone with her. It was the last long conversation we would have, you see she was in the final stages of her disease (Sjögren’s) and was at peace with it. She told me that she was not going to make it and that life was short. She told me that I needed to get off of my ass and use what God gave me and that if I let it go to waste then I was a fool.
I brushed off that conversation a few times. Out of fear. Out of fear of failure. Too many times I’ve done this in my life. What is fear anyway? There is a great acronym for it; False Evidence Appearing Real.
A month or so later I was in New York City recording an album with a group. I took a day off and headed up to Connecticut where Darlene was in the hospital. I met the family up there, us laughing and joking as we’ve always done, we didn’t want Darlene to see us sad, we were there to cheer her up when it fact it was the other way around. We were there for Darlene, our rock, to console us and let us know that everything was going to be ok. She was very frail but still had her sense of humor, her laugh… an unmistakable laugh that I still hear in my head. Everyone of us sat with her and when it was my time to sit with her she reiterated what she had told me on the phone no more than a month earlier…
“David… Live your life to its fullest and don’t look back. You have a gift, use it. Don’t waste it away.”
There is a song that reminds me of what she said and I’ve since adopted that song as a reminder of her words. It might just be a wake up call for you as well. Take a listen.
Tim McGraw – Live like you were Dying
That was the last time I saw her.
When she passed I packed everything into my pick-up truck and moved to Los Angeles to do what I am doing today. It hasn’t been easy, but I know now I’m living on my own terms and giving of myself to the world. It doesn’t seem like six years to me because I’ve done so much in the last six years, it seems like a whole other life, it has been a whole other life and I thank her for kicking me in the ass to do it. Sometimes it takes a tragedy to wake us up. I never want to be on my death bed saying, “I wish I woulda.”
When I went back to Connecticut for her memorial I could not believe the amount of people that were there. Literally hundreds of people that I didn’t know. People that she had healed, who loved her just as much as I loved her. It was humbling to listen to people tell me how my sister had changed their lives and made them who they are today. It was my sister that believed in them enough to get them to believe in themselves.
Most people in this world are afraid of Death. They are afraid of dying. What they should be more afraid of is… not living. Life & Death, Yin/Yang, Light/Dark… You can’t have one without the other, nor should you want one without the other. Without Death people would not truly live. So if there is a lesson in all of this, it is that Life is mean’t to be lived and that living our own lives is necessary if only as an example for others, but most importantly because it is our life. If you are just living your life going to work for some half assed job so you can buy stuff so you can be ‘happy’, you are fooling yourself. Once you do what you were mean’t to do here then, and only then, will you be happy. So do like my sister said, “Get off your ass and start living.”
Darlene left us here to carry on her work. My sisters Michelle, Nicole and Lezette and my brothers Fred, Derek and Erek. Seven siblings thrown together in this world, Darlene the Eighth. The symbol of Infinity, eternal life, never ending, as I believe we all are.
Darlene… Thank you for reminding me once again, who I am.
Peace,
David
P.S.
The picture that you see is of Darlene on her wedding day. She and her husband Barry were together until her passing. So I hold this day special in my heart for him as well and I admire him for doing like the song says, “Live like you were dying.”
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