It saddens me that loved ones who have already passed on from this lifetime don’t get to experience major events that occur after their lives have ended. My dad didn’t get to experience the internet or meet my partner, Jenn, whom I met two decades after he died. He didn’t get to meet Niki, my brother’s wife, nor Macy and Trey, my niece and nephew. My grandparents didn’t get to meet me as an adult, and my dad only knew me up through age 19. Similarly, Gavin, Jared, and Trafton passed on before experiencing #MeToo and BLM. Terry left his body shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic began.
Not that I want anyone to live through a pandemic, but negative events such as these are still important shared experiences that shape my and everyone else’s lives. The more time that passes without our loved ones who are no longer physically with us, the less we have in common with them. The less they knew about who we have become and what our world has become. That makes me sad.
That said, if you believe in reincarnation as I do, perhaps these loved ones are now in different bodies experiencing these major shared events after all. In this lifetime, Dad may not have known me as an adult, met Jenn, played on the internet, nor experienced the pandemic. But in his next lifetime, he may get to go online and play with modern technologies after all. He may yet experience and understand firsthand the importance of #MeToo and BLM and adapt to the pandemic. He may be learning and growing from all of this experience just as the rest of us are.
I’ll take it a step further. It’s possible, likely even, that we may reincarnate and get to be in each others’ lives once more. We’ll share new experiences together again, just in new bodies in new timelines. Perhaps we all reincarnate in our loved ones’ lives over and over through the millennia, repeatedly sharing journeys together precisely because we love each other. Perhaps our shared adventures together aren’t over after all. Perhaps our intertwined stories have only just begun. That thought brings me joy.