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Eating the Sun

Writer's picture: jaclyn kingjaclyn king

(Disclaimer: This post discusses death and dying. Read or pass with your own mental health in mind.)


As we near the winter solstice, the darkest day of the year, I’ve been thinking a lot about death. The winter season is most often associated with endings, as it is the end of the calendar year, and with the loss of the leaves, migration of the birds, and hibernation of many animals, there seems to be a quiet in nature not unlike a death. I can stand in the forest and hear hardly a whisper of life in the air, the ground is frozen, plants have gone back under the soil, and daylight is fleeting. This time of year, I also find myself frequently remembering loved ones who I have lost, as if the darkness of the season brings their memories closer. And my family is also in a season of life where we have loved ones who are aging and passing, so our conversations have more frequently turned to the topics of life and death as of late. 


Christians believe that your consciousness stays whole after you die, and you move on to heaven (or hell). Some people believe that their loved ones stay around on Earth as friendly ghosts or conscious energy that hovers nearby watching over them. Some Eastern religions believe in reincarnation, where your spirit passes to another living being and you are reborn over and over. We look for signs and pray and meditate and read about angels and hauntings and all sorts of ideas that bring us comfort and attempt to explain the inexplicable, because death can be scary and sad. 



I take comfort in nature. The idea that my body and all of the energy within it will be returned to the Earth after I die feels right to me; that I will give back to the system from which I came. I eat the plants and animals on this planet; their deaths sustain me. After I pass, if I am buried, I will decompose and my body will become soil for plants to grow and food for animals and insects to eat, completing the cycle. If I am cremated, my energy will be released as heat and light, radiating into the atmosphere, and my ashes will be returned to the earth. Either way, the idea that my parts and pieces are a fraction of a larger whole that never ends makes my own unavoidable death easier for me to accept. Where my consciousness might go is unknown and I’m okay with that, even if it means my consciousness simply ceases to exist. If this idea is fearful or discomforting for you, that’s where your spirituality or religious choices come in to bring you solace!



I also bring myself comfort in the dark season by bringing the sun into my life in as many ways as I can. I remember that the food I eat comes from the sunshine; plants use the sunlight to live and grow, and when we eat them we are literally eating sun energy. It’s the same if you are eating an animal who ate the plants; you are one more step removed, but regardless you are eating sunshine. Wintertime is when my family enjoys the fruits of my gardening and canning labor, and I can pop open a can of carrots and vividly recall pulling them up from the warm Earth while I eat them. When I heat up a can of my homemade pasta sauce for dinner, I can taste the bright sunshine in the red ripe tomatoes I plucked from the vine back when I was barefoot and it was 75* out. Even when I use an oil infused with Sacred Basil on my skin or spray a minty hair tonic on my scalp, I can smell and feel the sunshine from those herbs, recalling their harvest and the process of drying them, the greenness of it all. I am eating and wearing and soaking myself in the sun, even when it is dark outside. I am adorning myself inside and out with last season’s garden. 


Death is temporary, a season, just a part of our life cycle; it is not really the end. Just as right now the sap still moves sluggishly deep inside the trees and the animals are hunkered down in their dens deep asleep, the end of your life cycle is not final; your energy may disperse or leave your physical body, but it does not disappear. Even when the sky is gray, the sun is still up there behind the clouds. Even when your container has ceased to breathe, you remain on Earth in a different form, or in many different forms. Winter is impermanent, just as your life is impermanent. All things end and nothing ever truly ends. Take comfort. Eat the sun. You are the sun. 


"Energy can neither be created nor destroyed; only converted from one form to another."

~ The First Law of Thermodynamics




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