On Will, 176 BE

on Will on death

"Soon will our handful of days, our vanishing life, be gone, and we shall pass, empty-handed, into the hollow that is dug for those who speak no more."

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One Report is spiritually-minded content for and by young people. This publication is borne from a reflection of the teachings of the Baha’i Faith and many of our contributors are Baha’is, but not all.

The goal is for One Report to offer space for people from all faith backgrounds and beliefs to discuss issues of faith and spirituality. In a time of turmoil, One Report hopes to be a source of unity and collaboration. It is an opportunity for young people to learn from one another and share reflections that feel relevant, pressing, stirring, and elevated.

Thank you.

One Report is edited by Anisa Tavangar with Maya Mansour.

Images in this issue are by Nisa Lambrecht.

As Memory, As Vapor Written by Chloe Morris

When my nana died, she went fighting and afraid, and that made it somehow harder to let her go. Death didn’t really sneak up on us but it did change the vessel of one of my closest spirits, releasing her earth form into something invisible. All we can do is try to feel and eventually come to know through feeling that she’s okay. In one version of her death, toted by my relatives, she’s sitting with her long-deceased husband on a beach somewhere, fabulous and reclining with her toes in the sand. But I think that version is there to comfort those on earth.

When someone dies, we can’t see them anymore but they’re still here. They exist as memory, as vapor, when you conjure them. When you think of them, or when you suddenly remember them, or feel them in your body. How does that happen? It’s a connection to another realm, a different realm, one we can’t see and is not higher, and of which there are many. It exists just beneath the surface.

I keep thinking about how every single person is unique so how could they just be gone to never exist again?

Impossible. I go back and forth toying with the idea that energy is finite and recycling, or somehow infinite and never-ending and always regenerating. Maybe it’s both, or maybe the new energy is different formations of the old. But either way, I know that when I happy-cry about how beautiful my nana is, her spirit is the one rustling the leaves.

Living in her weight Written by Eemanna Rivers

all death has weight but for me, not all death is weighed the same some of it weighs more heavily on memory for an individual, some of it weighs more on memory of a collective and all of it lays in spiritual memory.

My memory of my grandmother has been very physical.

I attribute this to how recently she passed away and my ability to remember her.

I think about the weight she took up when she was alive, I think about the weight she now takes up in her reunion with the creator.

Her weight for me is now the impact of her life and lately, I have been working to make her an ancestor, to make her alive to me in her new station.

My grandmother’s death is now within my interpretation of her in relation to my conscious memory— to my life outside of the womb.

My twin sister Taheera’s death weighs differently on me. before my birth, I had an identical twin sister, and I believe after my birth I still have her.

I count the time before my birth However, I’m only able to count it in the weight and impact she has on me.

I learned about my sister’s passing early, my first spiritual imagination developed through this

this imagination connected the invisible to the visible.

I drew a connection between my emotional state and hers, Taheera informed what I understood and what I expected in terms of relationships.

I attributed my understanding of depth and bonds to her passing.

I always felt a natural element of loneliness in my being

one that left me craving intimacy craving an unattainable connection in this physical realm, I believe this connection I long for is my connection to Taheera my missing of the physical memory, the tangible memory that exi emotions.

You could say this void I try to fill has already been taken, this search for fulfillment has slowed as I’ve accepted it as my rea I can heal through accepting spiritual memories maybe through th with my physical one.

In reflection, when I think of death, I think of time; I think of bonds; I think of transcendence— a connection beyond the physical that l

Memory is not an inescapable infor We all add to this greater perception This is the princip Death is part of th death is one of th death in its physi and the will to liv Death is weight o us in all of those f

ists beyond my

ality, but I wonder if his I can be content

lives in memory.

n experience the individual, rather generation collective rmation. s pool of information and everything within the pool affects our n of the world and a greater perception of our self. ple of connectedness when we see its marriage to time. his collective memory, he few things that does not have to be relearned or introduced, ical manifestation is instinct ve is the desire to continue a story in this collective memory. on memory, of the mind, spirit and physical. We carry death with forms.

“Remembering me at the time of death, close down the doors of the senses and place the mind in the heart. Then, while absorbed in meditation, focus all energy upwards to the head. Repeating in this state the divine name, the syllable Om that represents the changeless Brahman, you will go forth from the body and attain the supreme goal.�

Bhagavad Gita

Spirits moving Written by Isha Damle

The collective psyche of my family has ached for the last decade. A dull pain persists, one that we try to push away in our own ways. The people I love the most may not want to admit this.

Spirituality allows my loved ones to deal with the practical, droll, and painful elements of death and the physical remnants of the people they used to talk to at the breakfast table every day. In a religion and culture that emphasizes the collective, they have had to mourn, and celebrate, together while grappling with the repetitive internal whalloping of loss.

I mourn privately, or at least I try to. Being over 8,000 miles away from my family in India has made that more possible. I haven’t wanted anyone to see

the pain that, several times over, has struck at and marked different stages of my life, bursting through my lungs at night and ripping through my seemingly shredded tear ducts. The nonlinear pathway of mourning is something that I don’t fully understand to this day; I don’t want the interpretations of someone else’s brain synapses thrust onto me.

There is beauty in tradition, and as we must all accept, death is a tradition we have no choice but to eventually partake in. My unconventional understanding of Hindu death rituals stems from my highly introspective exposure to my family’s more traditional practices. There is one particular ritual I have never been exposed to, but find uncontrollably moving. When someone dies, we offer rice to our loved one, uttering affirmations so that their spirit can move onto the next realm without holding onto the concerns of their life on Earth.

When a spirit is ready to move on, crows descend on the area to collect rice offerings. When the spirit has qualms, you feel additional pains of absent crows.

Family members will drill to the deepest core of their minds, to realities they are unwilling to face at times, in order to address whatever is holding back the spirit in question so that those damned crows appear. It is in this reflection, which is both freeing and staggeringly painful, that we are best able to understand the person we have lost, our role in their lives, and vice versa. This ritual bridges a gap between our plane of existence and that of what we do not know. It allows us to accept that our loved one is gone. Whether or not they left peacefully, we have the opportunity to ensure that they tread with peace of mind onto another path that we cannot expect to know until it is our own time.

Death, Dreams, & Awakening Written by Nava Kavelin

Perhaps the most unkind thing said to me in the months after my mother’s passing was, “Would you be this sad if you had real faith in the afterlife?” Comments like these simply add pain to pain. For several months, I shouldered new guilt, wondering whether faithlessness was responsible for my anguish. But I was not faithless. I did not doubt. What I felt was the relentless ache of being separated, suddenly and irreversibly, from the person I loved the most. In this life I would never see, hear or touch her again.

I was an adult woman who would not go to the dentist without my mother there to hold my hand.

How was I supposed to wrap my mind around childbirth without her? Sometimes when my feet got cold, I’d start crying, remembering how frequently my mom would ask me about my toes, often concerned I wasn’t wearing thick enough socks to protect them. Would anyone ever worry about my toes again?

Who would caress my arms while chanting sweet Persian melodies to help me fall asleep?

Would I ever eat a Persian meal as delicious as my mother’s? How could I go on, knowing all the things I would miss? The twinkle of sweet mischief in her expressive eyes. The surprise and wonder of being caught off guard by her knowing

“To seek death is death's only cure.”

Attar of Nishapur, The Conference of the Birds

something secret about me, because she had a dream about it, or it had come to her in a moment of meditation. The safety of her embrace when I was heartbroken, and the sweetness of her love, as expressed through her boundless generosity and frequent affection. This was a blistering loss for a girl who also didn’t have a husband and children to share similar intimate moments with.

For about a year after my mother’s death, I woke up at least once a week in the middle of the night crying, wondering if my father would go suddenly, too. Five years out, I can barely listen to a collection of her voice messages because hearing her voice still guts me more than it soothes me.

Since mama’s passing, I have moved away from God and closer to God, but have not for one instant been forgetful of God. The idea of my own death does not scare me, but the idea of losing other loved ones makes me panic.

I feel mama’s presence in my daily life. I feel her steer me away from danger just as I feel her steer me towards joy.

Doors have unlocked that I am certain she held the key to. I know that our destinies are forever entwined. Still, I long for her in my dreams, and try to conjure her in my awakenings.

O my God! O my God! Verily, thy servant, humble before the majesty of Thy divine supremacy, lowly at the door of Thy oneness, hath believed in Thee and in Thy verses, hath testified to Thy word, hath been enkindled with the fire of Thy love, hath been immersed in the depths of the ocean of Thy knowledge, hath been attracted by Thy breezes, hath relied upon Thee, hath turned his face to Thee, hath offered his supplications to Thee, and hath been assured of Thy pardon and forgiveness.

He hath abandoned this mortal life and hath flown to the kingdom of immortality, yearning for the favor of meeting Thee.

O Lord, glorify his station, shelter him under the pavilion of Thy supreme mercy, cause him to enter Thy glorious paradise, and perpetuate his existence in Thine exalted rose garden, that he may plunge into the sea of light in the world of mysteries.

Verily, Thou art the Generous, the Powerful, the Forgiver and the Bestower.

Abdu’l-Baha

When they were gone Written by Samira Saunders

There was something magical about the way my grandparents would leave in the night. As a child, it never occurred to me that I could accompany them to the airport. Children don’t think about hours like 2am. I would hug them tight with promises of seeing “I remember that pain I them soon, drifting off to felt as a child at their loss. sleep with the warm hall Perhaps I was mourning light keeping me safe and the sound of gentle the loss that was to come. late night packing. In That Great, Inevitable Loss.� the morning, it was as if it had all been a dream.

The smell on their pillows, like a little sprinkling of fairy dust, was a presence still living in the room. Sometimes it was a note left on the pillow or a few gummy worms or some money. My grandparents were flying back across the globe to El Dorado, the aptly named property they lived in at the outskirts of Atlanta. As melodramatic as ever, I would lie on their bed and cry to myself, singing little love songs to their memories that had barely left the room.

Years later, as my grandfather is gone and my grandmother is alone in that big house in the forest, I remember that pain I felt as a child at their loss. Perhaps I was mourning the loss that was to come. That Great, Inevitable Loss.

My grandfather is everywhere and nowhere. He has achieved nothingness.

Supreme detachment in life and in death. I can almost feel him everywhere, yet I do not feel him at all.

My grandmother lives in her loss, like the shroud of her culture she does not wear.

I sit on the bed my grandmother has cried herself to sleep on.

Her tears have watered the flowers that fall across its spread.

Last night I watched her pray to Gods I wonder if she still has faith in.

Stuie Written by Nikhil Chopra

“Stuie is gone. He has gone...,” Kusum Dadi said as she motioned her hands towards the sky, “...up.” I thought he might have run away but he hadn’t.

Our driver found him unresponsive in his crate earlier that morning.

“Me and four others silently across the ro empty plot, where a dug hole lay waiting driver placed him in and each of us pour sugar over the corp

And there he was: a beautiful, fourmonth-old Beagle puppy. He should have been sleeping, warm and cuddly, not cold and stiff. His beady, open eyes and limp tongue affirmed his passing; a pool of coagulated blood gathered around his mouth. “Weird,” I thought, about the blood.

Maybe he had bitten a poisonous strawberry. Or maybe he was playing dead.

I walked out of the room, dizzy. I steadied myself on a nearby branch and vomited. It felt better to puke than to cry. Behind me was the younger mother of the house, crying. The idea of something dying on her property was enough to reduce her to anxious tears. She had not touched or looked at that dead thing while it was alive. “Stop crying,” I said to her in my head as I walked past.

As soon as I saw his poor carcass, the funeral began. The driver came into the room, draped him in a white sheet, and walked him through the entryway of the property.

Me and four others walked silently across the road to an empty plot, where a freshly dug hole lay waiting for us. The

driver placed him in the hole and each of us poured salt and sugar over the corpse. They seasoned him with a single egg, poured dirt over him, patted it in, laid some brush over him so that other animals would not discover walked their next meal, and we all walked back through oad to an the plot, across the road, and through the gates again. freshly

for us. The the hole red salt and pse.�

Everything in India is ceremonial. When you make morning tea, your hand swishes through the air as you pull together spices, tea, water, milk, and sugar into one pot, waiting for the milk to boil before mixing in the sugar. When you get into an Uber, the driver must kiss his religious icon hanging from the rearview mirror. When you bury a dog, you season him with a salty-sweet omelet.

As soon as he was sealed, I fled to the highest point of the compound. Parts of me wanted to reach up to the deity my Uber drivers pray to, the place Kusum Dadi alluded to, and ask why Stuie had to go so soon. Why a God in heaven could ever punish an innocent Beagle for the sins of the world? But I know there is no answer when a question has no reception, no direction. Some things are facts: God does not exist. Life exists. Death exists. Stuie is dead. I am not.

And some answers require no question. I went to the roof, not to search for God and justice, but because I was angsty and sad.

From the roof, I could see the plot where we buried Stuie.

I tilted my head toward his grave and saw a cow standing right next to him.

"Perhaps the whole root o trouble, is that we will s our lives, will imprison ou crosses, blood sacrifices, armies, flags, nations, in o death, the only fact we hav ought to rejoice in the fact indeed, to earn one's death b the conundrum of life. One is the small beacon in that which we come and to which

James Baldwin, The Fire Next Tim

of our trouble, the human sacrifice all the beauty of urselves in totems, taboos, steeples, mosques, races, order to deny the fact of ve. It seems to me that one t of death- ought to decide, by confronting with passion e is responsible for life: It t terrifying darkness from h we shall return."

me

"O SON OF THE SUPREME! I have made death a messenger of joy to thee. Wherefore dost thou grieve? I made the light to shed on thee its splendor. Why dost thou veil thyself therefrom?"

Baha'u'llah

Pahiki Ecocaskets Written by Cortney Gusick

I founded Pāhiki Eco-Caskets after a deeply moving & intimate experience with the death of my dad. My family had the privilege of being able to accompany my dad as he transitioned from this stage of existence in 2010. As we navigated the complexities of the end-of-life space, we found a lack of continuity between our eco-conscious lifestyles and commensurate deathspace options. It was my dad’s wish to be buried in a simple wooden casket, sans embalming fluid or ephemeral trappings.

We found that the funeral homes’ casket offerings were constructed from non-biodegradable materials: steel, metal, lacquer, rubber, formaldehyde, polyester, etc.— and remember, these are things we bury and require Mama Earth to silently ingest, by the millions each year. There is an incredibly critical sustainability crisis in the deathspace, quite literally hidden in plain sight.

The majority of us live our whole lives striving to right by the earth,

recycling, demanding plastic straw bans, or composting.

Unfortunately, we also unwittingly impose millions of pounds of chemicals and toxins in burial and cremation alike.

And so, Pāhiki was born. We are catalyzing “environmental stewardship in deathcare” by crafting biodegradable ecocaskets from 100% locally reclaimed logs in Waimanalo, Hawaii using only wood, dowels, non-toxic glue, unbleached cotton muslin, and shellac. Nothing more. This also helps to curb the carbon footprint of importing over great distances and utilizes otherwise wasted trees. It’s a true win/win. We believe wholeheartedly that we shouldn’t bury anything in death that we wouldn’t be willing to bury in life.

Join us in committing to leaving the lightest possible ecotouch by thoughtfully considering, and documenting, the eco-implications of your end-of-life wishes. Find us at www.pahikicaskets.com or on Instagram @pahikicaskets.

Photos courtesy of Pāhiki Eco-Caskets.

The Button Pin Written by Rita Panapasa

I grew up in a Fijian household with Christian ideals. In my family, death follows the Christian teaching, revolving around heaven and hell. If you were practicing good Christian values, you’d go to heaven. Otherwise, you’ll be met with an ill-fate and go to hell. These beliefs for me changed when my grandmother passed away. In my last year of university, my cousin told me the news on the phone. When I heard the news, my heart cramped, my throat went dry, and tears started to well up. “Grandma was very sick and lived a good life. She’s in a better place now,” said my cousin.

My grandmother’s death was heartbreaking, because just the weekend before she passed I bought her a small button that read “World’s Greatest Grandma.” I wanted to give her the button the next time I saw her. All those dreams of having her part of my journey, showing her my college degree, celebrating milestones with her, were shattered. I am from an immigrant family here in Canada and wanted to make her proud, but unfortunately death had taken that opportunity away from me, or so I thought.

In March 2018, a group of us at university had the opportunity to invite Dr. Angela Davis, an American social justice activist, to speak at our university. The entire time, all I could think was “I wish grandma was here to see this. Why did she have to die?” That day, I introduced Dr. Davis with another student and on the stage, I could feel the overwhelming presence of my grandmother. I don’t

know how but my intuition just told me it was her and my nervousness quickly evaporated. The event was a success and when I walked back into my dorm room, I saw the “World’s Greatest Grandma” pin hanging on my wall. I started to tear up and smiled knowing that she was there and proud.

Christianity teaches that death is more of a judgement day than a stage in life.

Feeling my grandmother’s presence that day made think of death differently.

Her passing made me want to think of death the way my traditional culture knows death: it is not the end, just another beginning. My grandmother may not be in the physical realm but she is in the spiritual world.

In Fijian culture, we also believe that our ancestors are always around us, guiding us, protecting us, and this comforts me. I don’t think of death the way I used to.

I feel the presence of all my grandparents and the idea that I will one day join them doesn’t make death seem so lonely.

“He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.�

(Revelation 21:4)

Losing my father Written by Wynton St. Clair

My father and I never had a very close relationship. I used to stay up past bedtime to secretly watch my dad’s favorite show with him while he pretended not to notice. At the end of each show, he would always say, “Goodnight, Wynton,” in the playful, yet authoritative, tone that only a parent can convey.

When I got older, it became harder. My parents’ divorce when I was 16 was a reminder for my father to tell me he loved me. I hadn’t heard him say that to me, at least that I can remember, since I was a child. But at 17, he said it every time we spoke.

He moved out of state when I went to college and I would only see him on holidays at my grandmother’s. Talking to him felt strained. He didn’t feel like my dad, he felt like my father. I got to a point where I would speak with him and immediately after feel a sense of loss because I missed having a dad.

My father was hit by a car while crossing the street at the end of September. I don’t remember the exact date.

My Aunt Linda told me he was in the hospital and that I should drive down to see him. I hesitated saying I’d drop everything and come to my father’s side, who I hadn’t really spoken to in several months, but I went. For two weeks in the hospital, my father sat lifeless while I played family mediator. Not until after, I had my first panic attack. I had not given myself any space or time and no one saw my pain.

My father died alone in his hospital room on Friday the

“Know thou of a truth that the soul, after its separation from the body, will continue to progress until it attaineth the presence of God.” Baha’u’llah

13th in October 2017. A cruel cosmic joke that I may someday find funny. I left his side because I thought I had time and it was 2 a.m., so I wanted to sleep. And my father, who I’m sure spent most of his life feeling like an outcast, died alone.

My father’s body had to be prepared for his internment and I had no idea what to do. I was blessed with two beautiful helpers who assisted me in cleaning his body and wrapping it in silk. I could only bring myself to wash his face and hair. I shaved my father’s face with a razor, noticing the toughness of his dead skin. Touching my father as a body, and not a person, reminded me that his soul was once bound to this vessel. I looked at the years of sorrow I know he endured. I looked at the face of a man I knew so deeply yet hardly recognized anymore. I looked at my dad for the first time in almost two years and I missed him so deeply. I asked for the room and wept.

I scattered rose petals over his body and tucked them between the folds of the silk that encased him. I took the time to say his final obligatory prayer “I bear witness oh my God, that thou hast created me to know Thee and to worship Thee. I testify at this moment to my powerlessness and to Thy might. To my poverty and to Thy wealth. There is none other God but Thee, the help in peril, the self subsisting.” I said Alláh-u-Abhá 95 times and kissed his forehead. With tears flowing down my face and my legs unable to hold me I prayed. I prayed for forgiveness. I prayed for love and acceptance.

I have such a closer connection with my father now than I have throughout my entire adult life. And we talk more, or at least I do. Death is always a loss. And is always painful. And, I’ve also found, it’s an opportunity to reclaim skipped time. To have conversations that were missed.

To communicate what could never be said. I still miss my father but I will always have my dad with me.

overwhelming wave Written by Bryan Marchena

So, last night, something happened on our way home— we would’ve been smooth sailing otherwise.

I guess there was a train stuck on the tracks.

The delay made me fight the pointlessness of life right then and there; it was an overwhelming wave of WHY? For what?

I love sweating and then jumping into cold, deep water.

I love kissing my partner’s neck and then moving onto a million pecks on their face.

But these holy rituals are so far removed from external experience; I can feel them in my spiritual body; they are food.

I can’t get past the goal making and goal accomplishing rat race that happens in my physical body and becomes parasitic to my spiritual body.

There is some sort of gap to be bridged A.K.A. I need to die to be safe from the mental termites but nary without that stupid, stupid mortal fear that our life was not heard, that we did not get the chance to sing our song. So I’m going to have to stay here and tell myself I’ll polish up the chorus.

Maybe my hologram is better at falsettos. Anyway, it turns out somebody was fully integrated into the spiritual realm

at the 69th street red line station when a train ran over their physical body and this train ain’t running no more.

It’s easy for these moments to suffocate you like your moment is coming too— oh wait... IT IS. So you gotta keep chewing on that perception of time thing or it’ll feel like your physical body died yesterday. Dying is cool, yeah, but it takes time lil’ baby you gotta be patient.

Halting Tragedy Written by Suraiya Ali

Humans die. We are indoctrinated with the fact that our livelihoods are not infinite and through some social system— religion, philosophy, community practice— we learn how to cope with this fact. We hope that through these systems we can learn to die after a long and fulfilling life. These systems prescribe rules on how to live, or in retrospect, how to die. We are given these parameters and some of us follow them better than others. Some of us exploit the parameters and extrapolate them in extreme ways. Others leave behind regulations all together to build their own. But within all of these parameters that show us how to die by showing us how to live, every person does the same thing: they tell stories.

All humans tell stories. There are only two things that are certain for every single human being: we die and we tell stories. Each parameter has its own stories attached. We tell stories because our lives depend on it. Even if humans die, our stories live on. When we die, our bodies are buried and break down into something else. Stories are passed down, written, recorded, and while they change, they remain human even as they are altered. The most human thing about us are the stories we say to each other, to divinity, to our enemies, and to ourselves. Stories, unlike humans, can exist in multiple places at once, and multiple realities at once. Stories are the truest essence of humanity.

Humans are meant to die, but their stories have the means to live forever. It is when we lose these stories that we face

real human tragedy. The death of a story is the only true death. Stories are gunned down in ethnic cleansing, they are raped out of the wombs of women, they are shot by the spread of violence. They are demolished, razed, and built on with the spread of capitalism. They are burned down, flooded, and evaporated in the wake of a climate crisis. This is the real tragedy humanity is facing. Death to the human is absolute, but death to the story is not. Fighting to protect human lives is noble and necessary, but fighting to protect human stories, that is how we halt tragedy.

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