It’s been 4 years since I moved to the country from Sydney. One of the things I feared when I left the Big Smoke was that I would be forgotten by the many yoga students and teachers who were my family there for more than thirty years. I used to know everyone who was anyone in yoga. I couldn’t go anywhere without running into someone from my yoga community. I loved that.
I got to test my theory/paranoia when I was in Sydney for a brief time last week. I attended a yoga class led by an old student and friend who is has been an accomplished teacher in her own right for many years. At the beginning of the session, she kindly introduced me to her class. As I looked around the room, I saw one or two people I knew from the ‘old days’ but for the most part, I and the students were strangers.
Of course, in recent years I’ve been busy establishing my teaching at the Yoga Shed and fostering a rural yoga community. In the meantime, many yoga friends, students and colleagues have visited me on Mitchells Island. I shouldn’t be so precious about whatever reputation I established in the past, but there you go; I still want to be remembered (and told so). To be honest, this very ‘Yoga with Eve Grzybowski’ blog is partly a bridge to those I’ve know in the past.
Death is the ultimate leave-taking and those who have departed will be forgotten. It may take years or decades but eventually it will happen, unless perhaps they are eminent in the world – like Nelson Mandela.
My friend Susan left her body on Wednesday of this week. Susan is also my housemate and soul sister’s sister – that is, Judy. So this death is poignant. It’s also brought up the sadness around my own sister’s passing which was 15 years ago. I don’t think of her so often anymore, but when I do, I’ve elevated her to a pedestal and remember mainly the best things about her and who she was in the world.

The other day I heard an octogenarian say, ‘It’s so sad. All my friends are dying.’
This will be our fate one day – for some sooner and some later. We may be the last person standing in our circle of friends. Who knows?
Is there anything to be done? Maybe just to live with and appreciate the impermanence of life and even recognise that my concern about being forgotten could be practice for the final departure.