A Letter to a Bereaved Family by Ram Dass....

When I was a newly bereaved parent, I was lost. I didn't sleep at nights. I surfed the internet looking for -- *warning* -- pictures of dead babies. Why???? you ask...
Well, because I couldn't look at the pictures of my own dead little girl because I was terrified that she would "look dead." I wanted to remember the way she felt in my arms and how beautiful she looked to me when she was born. During one of these long, lonely, desperate nights, I found KotaPress and Kara. Kara is a bereaved mom who is the person who saved my life. Don't confuse the real people who were there for me...my sisters made life liveable. But, in the middle of the night when I didn't understand how to navigate the waters of losing my baby, Kara was there. It did help that she was on Pacific time. I communicated with Kara via e-mail and through a yahoo group for years. I got through my first Christmas, my first Mother's Day, my first every holiday that year and then the first anniversary of her birth and death. The following letter is read by a bereaved mom in a DVD called "Fierce Grace." Kara posted it on our yahoo group Nov. 1st, 2004. I still have the original print-out because it had such a huge impact on me...

Dear Melanie [I have substituted my name and my daughter's name for the original family's because it helps me],

Lily finished her work on earth, and left the stage in a manner that leaves those of us left behind with a cry of agony in our hearts, as the fragile thread of our faith is dealt with so violently. Is anyone strong enough to stay conscious through such teaching as you are receiving? Probably very few. And even they would only have a whisper of equanimity and peace amidst the screaming trumpets of their rage, grief, horror and desolation.

I can't assuage your pain with any words, nor should I. For your pain is Lily's legacy to you. Not that she or I would inflict such pain by choice, but there it is. And it must burn its purifying way to completion. For something in you dies when you bear the unbearable, and it is only in that dark night of the soul that you are prepared to see as God sees, and to love as God loves.

Now is the time to let your grief find expression. No false strength.

Now is the time to sit quietly and speak to Lily, and thank her for being with you for these past months, and encourage her to go on with whatever her work is, knowing that you will grow in compassion and wisdom from this experience. In my heart, I know that you and she will meet again and again, and recognize the many ways in which you have known each other. And when you meet, you will know, in a flash, what now it is not given to you to know: Why this had to be the way it was.

Our rational minds can never understand what has happened, but our hearts -- if we can keep them open to God -- will find their own intuitive way. Lily came through you to do her work on earth, which includes her manner of death. Now her soul is free and the the love that you can share with her is invulnerable to the winds of changing time and space. In that deep love, include me.

In love,
Ram Dass