A Heart’s Journey
She declared on her deathbed that for the past fifty years she had lived with a secret: she was a lesbian. She never acted on her impulse, she said. She was married and had a child to raise. The thought of loving someone of the same gender and acting within the precepts of that love stood against the dictates of her Christian religion and her upbringing. So, she hid her lust and longing from all around her and lived a life going through the motions and checking the appropriate boxes to certify herself a good woman. She smiled at family gatherings, attended church faithfully, and fulfilled every role expected of her, yet privately carried a loneliness no one ever saw.
Then she passed from this world and her shell lay there on the hospital bed, ever silent and unmoving. She took on the appearance of someone sleeping at rest in body and mind. Yet her mouth and face did not show the calm demeanor of peace in passing, for on those lips and in her expression was a frown with downward turned sides of the mouth. Her facial muscles, from memory, held the frown in place forever.
A frown forever frozen on her face. An expression that seemed to tell the story of a life lived in quiet conflict. Supported by the activated facial muscles that held the frown as she rested in sleep through the night, then in the morning and throughout the day as she toiled. And now, in rigor mortis, forever.
She left this world and passed to the next world. Many believe that when we leave this world, we enter a realm of love, peace, and harmony. Our new world is like a dream. A dream we create and fashion while living in person on this world. And in that dream world we move into, we carry our baggage with us. The baggage isolates and separates us from the life force that emanates in this cradle of creation. The baggage erupts and hinders our experience of the peace we seek in our repose, our “in between.” If we spend a life in this world refusing love and closing ourselves off from intimacy, we create that baggage that hinders us in the next world.
We are what we are here. A healthy society acknowledges our peculiarities and fashions laws and customs to accommodate and integrate them, as all are created equal and in the image of eternal love, the god creator. And in the cases where we place our hidden identities by the wayside, the life lived becomes a challenge, forsaking the love and life that called. And the frown grows ever so slightly day by day, until it becomes frozen and a semaphore of the misery within the living experience.
What of this frowning woman? To pass from this life with a frown upon the face, built over a lifetime and frozen in death forever. What does that do to a soul? Would it have been better to accept the direction of her heart’s desire and live a true life? Would that frown have turned into a smile and her sorrowful days turned festive and whole? What will her baggage cost her in lost opportunity and intimacy forevermore?
A life spent denying the deepest truths of the heart can leave scars no one else can see. The courage to live authentically is rarely easy, but it may be the difference between merely existing and truly living.
Follow your heart. It matters. It makes a difference. And it is worth it.