Written by René Fay

I am very recently orphaned. At the time of writing this, my dad has been dead for just over two months. My mom has been dead for just over two years.

As a death doula I'm well aware that grief, and life for that matter, moves on its own terms. One cannot control when a pang, or a tidal wave, of grief will hit. As a Buddhist, I know at the core of the teachings and practices is this often uncomfortable truth: everything is impermanent.

What took me somewhat by surprise, though now it seems so obvious, was how utterly disorienting it would be to be parentless. If we live long enough, we all become orphans eventually. We know it is most likely going to happen, and we may even feel "prepared" for its inevitability. But there truly is something to the idea that we can't know what is lost until it's gone. Especially when the loss is something or someone that has been so central to how one has always navigated the world up until the moment of loss.

I found myself wondering: Who am I now that I'm not someone's child?

It felt like the ground fell away in so many ways, but really it's a reminder that the ground of identity is never solid. It's one thing, of course, to believe or know that intellectually. It's another to be faced with it at the time of extreme loss.

We are, all of us, always in transition. As Pema Chödrön reminds us: "We are always in a bardo, always in transition." In Buddhism the concept of bardo is the space in-between, most commonly used to talk about the time between death and rebirth. But it applies equally to the thresholds we cross within life itself.

It's tempting to want to dismiss the loss and carry on, business as usual. Everything is impermanent, so what's the big deal? But what I also experienced was an opening. An invitation. To not brush past or minimize this moment of big loss and also profound wisdom. This is it — this is what the practice is all about. Training to meet times of uncertainty, chaos, and identity crisis with curiosity and compassion. What can I learn about myself in the gap between who I've been and who I am becoming?

The temptation in times of big loss is to fight — against time, against reality, against the fact that this is how life moves. But fighting against what is leaves me unable to be present with what actually is. I don't yet know who I am as an orphan. But I am getting to know myself newly in the grief of their absence. And there is, unexpectedly, something that feels like liberation in that — not because the loss isn't real or the grief isn't deep, but because acceptance isn't defeat. It's the practice itself. It's a kinder, more honest relationship with life — and death — as they actually are.