Rest in Peace

REST IN PEACE

Recently a family member posted something lovely honoring my brother on Facebook.  A friend commented how nice the post was and then added; may he rest in peace.

Too often people say things just because, well, just because they have always been said.  Being the inquisitive person that I am I wondered where this epitaph originated.  I decided to do a little digging.  According to Wikipedia, ‘rest in peace’ stemmed from the Latin:  Requiescat in pace, which was commonly found on the graves of Catholics as it was derived from the burial services of the Catholic Church.

The abbreviation R.I.P. is now commonly used and can be seen almost anywhere a death is being acknowledged.

Yet something about it bothers me.

I’ve often referred to the unusual experience I had prior to my brother’s passing that changed my outlook on what happens after we die.   Well, that’s not completely accurate.  Until that point, I don’t think I really gave death much thought other than it is something that happens to all of us.  I did have some fuzzy idea there was something else, as in this so called ‘after life’ but if pressed to clarify, I don’t think I could have been any more specific than to rehash beliefs that had accumulated over many years.  But, after my own odd experience, I knew that the last thing a soul would be doing was ‘resting’.

If we believe we are boundless energy (and I do), then energy is in continuous motion.

One beautiful summer morning, a few months after my brother passed, I was hiking with a friend.  Ear buds placed snuggly in my ears I made my way along a beautiful trail occasionally humming whatever tune was playing (lucky for the world, no one could hear me).  It was during one of these humming sessions that a song came on that for some inexplicable reason reminded me of my brother.  The song itself didn’t to it but something about the rhythm of the music must have triggered a long forgotten memory.  I started to cry and cry hard.  There I was standing alone (my friend was quite a distance ahead) and crying in the middle of a mountain trail.  The sense of loss that hit me almost stopped my breathing.  I felt sorry.  I felt sorry that he wasn’t around to hike this or any trail.  I felt sorry that he couldn’t experience this sunny day.  It pained me that he couldn’t feel the warm of the sun.  I was lost in my sorrow that there was so much he would no longer experience.  Through my tears I looked up at the sky with the question…why? Why? Why?  It was when my eyes scanned the tree tops that a wonderful warm breeze enveloped me and I realized that no, he wasn’t going to be standing in front of me, but he WAS in everything around me.  He couldn’t feel the breeze because he WAS the breeze, he was the sunshine.  He was the energy around me in that instant.  The feeling was so powerful, that it stopped me right in my tracks and in that second as I really looked around me he was a part of everything I was experiencing.

That moment made me understand what the power of our energy really is.  It is everything around us and within us.  It is our breath, our heart beat.  It is a memory that is never distance.  It is ongoing.

So when people say rest in peace, the last thing I can imagine is that those who have left their physical bodies are resting at all.  They are renewed into something we have yet to comprehend.

They are busy being a part of our constant world, guiding and watching over all.