I Lost a Client Yesterday

Some people are so afraid to die
that they never begin to live.

--Henry Van Dyke--


 I lost a client yesterday.  He was happy-go-lucky 41 year old man who persevered and survived traumas so devastating that just listening to him share brought tears to your eyes.  He was a victim of childhood emotional and sexual abuse; in fact, the physical abuse was so bad that he suffered from traumatic brain injury, a result of having his head being banged against the wall and being beaten in the head with a pipe when he was growing up.  For awhile, he lived in a cardboard box.  Yet, through all of this, he always had a smile and a kind word for everyone. He loved people and enjoyed being with them.  He always carried a book bag full of candy which he gave out to everyone.  He never let life get him down.

I sat with him for what was to be our last session on Monday, and by Tuesday night he was gone.   From my understanding, he and a friend decided to go to Coney Island and swim in the icy waters just as the members of the Polar Bear club do.  The friend got sick, and said he he had changed his mind, that he wanted to go home, but my client refused to go.  Instead, he waited for his friend to leave and dived into the ocean, and didn't come out alive.  They found his body yesterday at 7 am, washed up on the shore miles and miles away.  Yesterday, his brother had to go and identify the body.  To me, it was such a silly thing to do, but who knows what another is really thinking.  Such a senseless loss!  

I am having a hard time dealing with this.  Life can just be so unfair.  Here is someone who spent his entire life suffering from the worst abuse imaginable, and just when he begins to turn his life around, he is taken from us.  Fate?  Destiny?  Do I believe?  I believe we were here before, and we will be here again.  And, as a reincarnationist, I also that we chose the circumstances of our lives before we are born.  They say that the day of your death is known by the inner self on the day of your birth,  and it is always you who makes the final decision to exit.  No one has ever died who was not ready to die, just as no one lives who did not choose to be born.  Life is sacred and should never be taken lightly.  But still, I cannot help but question...why????

Everything dies in one way or another. Each moment that passes means the one before has died. We have lived that moment to see the birth of a new time.  Spring replaces winter, summer comes from spring, then summer gives way to autumn, and autumn dies to winter.  Life is a continuous, never ending cycle. We will have life again, whether in heaven, the Summerland, through reincarnation, or even hell. Our lives will begin again.

"You live on earth only for a few short years
which you call an incarnation,
and then you leave your body as an outworn dress
and go for refreshment to your true home in the spirit."

~ White Eagle ~