I expected the holidays would make my posting sparse, but I didn’t plan on being absent for four-plus weeks, and I’m especially sorry to my regular readers. The reason for my long silence is that we had a tragedy in our family — an unexpected death, a death by [...]]]> I know. I’ve been gone a long time.

I expected the holidays would make my posting sparse, but I didn’t plan on being absent for four-plus weeks, and I’m especially sorry to my regular readers. The reason for my long silence is that we had a tragedy in our family — an unexpected death, a death by suicide.

I want to say that Brian’s death left me at a loss for words, and in many ways that is true. In the face of intense shock and sadness, and in the midst of my surviving family members’ pain, words just simply escaped me. I suppose this was, on one level, because everything I thought to say rang hollow, trite or simply inadequate to the hugeness of what happened so close to home.

But there is more to it than that.

Of all the words that make up my language of astrological psychology — words like love, conflict, aspiration, tension, learning, fighting, defending, reaching out, needing, limiting, ego, boundaries, dissolution — death is both the most ubiquitous and the most out-of-reach. It is very nearly ungraspable in its absoluteness and in the way it brings everything — everything — to a standstill. I just couldn’t, for the last four weeks, grasp Brian’s death enough to form words around it. And since it was all I could think about, I could hardly write about anything else.

But now that I’m back home, with the burial and the memorial service behind us, and a semblance of daily life returning, my first tentative thoughts are taking shape. Here they are.

We often choose death, each one of us, in the course of our daily lives. Of course, the death we choose is usually not literal: It is the death of a relationship, or the end of a job, or the close of a day, the drop into the dark, unpredictable waters of sleep. A door closes and that is that. An ending has occurred, from which there is no return.

Today, I feel sure of very little in life, but I do suspect that the ways we experience the little deaths of the everyday help guide us toward how we handle the final end, when it comes. And yet, although we choose those everyday deaths, in many ways we feel as if we are not, in fact, in charge of them. And so when someone chooses to end their own life, literally, it feels shocking. How could he do this? we think. And: I could never do that!

And yet, we do it too — yes, in a pale-by-comparison way, but we do. Often we blame others for our little daily deaths: I wouldn’t have quit my job if my boss weren’t such an ass. I would have stuck with the diet if things weren’t so stressful right now. I would have chosen strawberry if everyone else hadn’t chosen chocolate.

I don’t mean to be flip, but that kind of thinking — on any level — wraps us up in the Plutonian dynamic of control: Who is the dictator of our lives? Who ultimately decides whether a relationship dies, or a job ends, or a bad habit is over and done with, or even if our life is coming to a close? If our sense of control lies within, we can take responsibility for those endings that prepare us for the final end. But if we see ourselves as the victims of other people’s control, we feel unable to take charge of ourselves, of our destiny.

I’m not trying to analyze Brian’s life. I don’t know how in control he felt or didn’t feel. I’m certainly not advocating for suicide. I am, instead, asking each of us to examine to what degree we give over control of our choices — especially the choice to end something — to other people. Is it always true that others make the choice for us? Or do we instigate that choice sometimes, even unconsciously? And in cases where we truly aren’t in charge, what grace can we see in that?

It is not that we always need to be in control of what happens to us. But choosing to take charge, or choosing to let go and allow the universe to work its mysterious magic on our lives, is, in the most ideal world, a conscious process that advances the work of our souls. For each ending we choose is a distant echo of the Big One, of the final death that will ultimately end our own life as we know it. How do we handle the little earthquakes? Is it the same way we want to handle the big one, when it comes?

This question is often overshadowed by the bigger mystery of death — the what happens next?

Maybe the not-knowing is the most maddening, the most frightening, the most mysterious of all for those who remain. What is Brian experiencing now? Is there a Brian to experience something? The framework of the horoscope chart tells me that yes, there most certainly is — that the circle of life continues spiraling; that time continues on; that his essence has crossed over a particularly transformative point in time/space but that it continues on in some way, being shaped and made evermore whole with each passing day.

In his seminal work Suicide and the Soul, the brilliant scholar and archetypal psychologist James Hillman notes:

If one stands for psychological life, as the [psycho]analyst must, physical life may have to be thwarted and left unfulfilled in order to meet the soul’s claims, its pressing concerns with redemption. (p. 23)

I don’t like it. I don’t want it. I’m fighting it alongside my family. But I am trying to find the place in myself where I can respect it and honor it, where I can hope and believe that Brian’s soul is more whole and alive now than ever before.

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Of course, I have other tools, too, like feelings, family, friends and faith. Astrology isn’t always the first place I go, especially in the midst of tragedy, but I often end up there, searching for clarity, groping toward meaning.

So when a [...]]]> I don’t use astrology to predict events. I use it to help make sense of life.

Of course, I have other tools, too, like feelings, family, friends and faith. Astrology isn’t always the first place I go, especially in the midst of tragedy, but I often end up there, searching for clarity, groping toward meaning.

So when a dear friend was killed this weekend in a horrible accident, my first reaction was gasping disbelief. Second came a deep and jagged grief. Third, a need to connect with other friends who loved her. Then, as the reality coursed through me, came numbness, and emptiness.

This morning, because I am who I am, I awoke yearning to understand the senselessness of her death through the perspective of my craft of astrology.

Why does it hurt so much that she’s gone?

Why can’t I grasp that she went the way she did?

What are we supposed to do, anyway, with grief?

I’m not pretentious enough to claim I found answers. But below are my thoughts, the small bits of meaning I glimpsed as I pondered the sudden, premature, tragic death of a beautiful, life-loving woman.

I wrote on Friday about the way astrology views the usual cycle of energy that guides an event, whether it’s the blossoming of a flower, the unfolding of a life or the movement of seasons. There is output, then enjoyment, then — usually; hopefully — slow shifts that dismantle the old order and prepare for the next cycle. I pointed out how important it is to take time when contemplating great changes to an old way of being, how rushing change could lead to crisis. I thought I was talking about politics, and money.

The suddenness of Heather’s death interrupts our sense of how time unfolds. Life is supposed to spin out evenly from its spool, one long flowing arc at a time. When it doesn’t, we say things like: “How can this be?” And: “I can’t believe it.” And: “It just doesn’t make sense.” A sudden, tragic end to a life doesn’t fit into the expected patterns of our mind, nor the gently sloping pathways of our hearts. Life is supposed to allow us some time to get used to change, to learn what we need ahead of time, to shift our gaze toward the next phase. It’s not meant to thrust us into loss all at once. At the very, very least, life is supposed to allow us a bit of time to say goodbye.

When death comes unanticipated, we don’t know what to do with ourselves: our hands, our voices, the alarm rising up in our chests. Our minds: What are we supposed to even think?

Often, then, not knowing what to do, we turn to the specifics of the departed person herself. This is the other way I can look to astrology to make sense of this loss. Because it occurred to me that, while astrology views each planet and sign as a symbol of an internal personal trait, other people in our lives also carry some traits for us — especially, perhaps, the ones we’re not able to manifest well ourselves. We need them to show us the way, the proper expression of laughter, or confidence, or drivenness.

I kept remembering, yesterday, how much Heather simply embraced life — how deeply she drank in the pleasures of the world all around her. She seemed always engaged, passionate about everything from coffee to music to movies to the people she loved. She laughed easily. She teased and admonished and was always good-natured. She seemed to let troubles roll off her back, shooing them away like flies.

Other traits might stand out more for other people, depending who they are and how they related with her. But whatever the specific experience, in relationship generally, each person brings something that the other needs in their life. Sometimes it’s the thing that drives us crazy; sometimes it’s the thing we most admire. Sometimes we don’t even notice the trait till they are gone. And when they are gone, we are left holding our hands out, waiting for more of what they brought: that passion, or that teasing, or that laughter. And when it doesn’t come — again, we don’t know what to do.

We have, then, to find her elsewhere — not to replace her, but to fill the emptiness her death leaves in our lives. Maybe, hopefully, we find her gifts in ourselves.

So my questions now are: What gifts did Heather give me that I could not accept when she was alive? What traits did I unconsciously ask her to hold that I could not yet make a part of myself? What do I need to become, now that she is no longer there to be it for me? I look at the list above and know immediately.

And so to celebrate Heather’s life, and to defy the tragedy of her death, I promise myself, and my family, and my friends, to cling less fiercely to worry — to let it go — so I can sink much more into each delectable moment life hands me, the way I saw her do.

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