Cindy Dollar is an Iyengar teacher here in Asheville, NC.  I got this email from her studio and thought I'd share this with you all. 

Daddy died

"Daddy died," reported my tearful sister when I returned an urgent phone call from her.

I was stunned, shocked, sad, and surprised as I slid down the wall to land in a heap on the floor of the small yoga studio. I had just spent an enjoyable day with my dad six days before as my family celebrated my niece's high school graduation. He and I had talked over lunch at Whole Foods ("that place where they weigh the food") in Winston-Salem. We had talked about life (and death), about the weather, about finances, and about his willingness to let me and the rest of our family help him out more as his memory slipped a bit.

Now I am not unknowing about death. People, dogs, and cats that I have loved have died. But not my Daddy. Not the one who taught me how to ride a blue Huffy bicycle in the backyard on Kenwood Street. Not the one who would wake me up early in the morning at Ocean Drive Beach to watch the sunrise over the ocean. Not the one who took me on Sundays to Parkview Pharmacy, where I priced baby formula with a black grease pencil. Not the one who made slaw for our hamburgers and hot dogs on the Fourth of July. Not my daddy.

So now what? I know all the clichés about death: "He's in a better place." "He's out of his pain." "He dropped his body." "Death is like taking off a tight shoe." I mean, every day I say "Namaste" and I acknowledge the place of oneness within each of where we are all one – the place of pure awareness, of Source, the place whence we come and the place to which we return. I know that we can never be separate from each other, that we are energy and life force that has existed since the beginning of beginningless time. But I miss my daddy. I feel five years old.

And I get it. I understand that all of us, each of us, will at some time die, drop our body, pass away, reach Heaven's gate, transition into the next realm, go through the death bardo. I get it. What do I get? I get that we come into form, are in form, and pass out of form – just like thoughts, like houses, like asanas, like mountains. I get it that birth and death are inseparable, that death arises from life itself, that (as my husband says) "Life is the leading cause of death."

So the question begs to be asked "How do I want to live my life?" Since my time on earth is limited, how do I want to spend it? Do I want to be present to my life – to live fully and lovingly with awareness of the connection of all? Or do I choose to live a life of dissatisfaction, of complaining about the way things are. Can I live a life of awareness and acceptance? Yes, I believe I can. I practice daily to do that, to accept what life brings me, including death, including a broken thumb, including joy and sadness, despair and hope, including all that exists, because I know from practice that everything changes. That staying present and acknowledging my ever-changing emotions without clinging to any of them will let them move through me so I can be present to now, now, now.

So I grieve for my father while at the same time I am grateful for the time we had together (except for maybe those teenage years when I stayed grounded). I recognize that he does indeed live on in me, in how I view the world, in my education as a pharmacist, in my love of poetry and philosophy. I cry one minute and laugh in another as we share stories of Daddy sweeping the floor so my baby sister could crawl on it, of him teaching each of us four girls how to drive a straight shift in the '67 VW bug, of how he checked out all of our boyfriends (now there was a job!), and how he always said to each of us "You're my favorite" and how he meant it.

I walked around his house last week and picked up scraps of paper with poems or pieces of philosophy on them – pieces of him, really. I end with a few of those:

"What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Relationships need nothing more than sincerity."
— from a fortune cookie!

"In these words I can sum up everything I've learned about life. It goes on."
— Robert Frost

May we each live a life of awareness and love.

Namaste,
Cindy