I visited with my friend Karen on Sunday, before Monday’s pouncing heat wave, and she took the dogs and me on one of various trails through wood and glen (one of which she calls the Delta), part of the land she and her husband have lived on, cared for, and are conserving for future generations. At some point I realized that doing this was precious not just because of the tiny blueberries we found inches off the ground or the hundreds of clusters of pink and white mountain laurel, but because I was following her, the woman who had created these narrow paths through closely watched, beloved, dense woods.

The path could easily get overgrown, as you can see from the photo above, and get overtaken by the thick shrubbery. Already, I marveled at how she followed it. It made me think of the many people who carved out passageways for me, be it in the forest or the mountains, in spiritual and religious practices, in permaculture and gardening, how to eat responsibly, talk and work responsibly, live responsibly.

I was already thinking of her as an ancestor even as she’s very much alive, because like all ancestors, the work she did wasn’t just on her own and family’s behalf, but also on behalf of future humans and our more-than-human relatives, as Robin Wall Kimmerer calls them.

In Bernie’s lifetime, I kinda knew I was married to an ancestor. Not because his name was mentioned in certain dedications in our liturgy, but because, over 35 years, I witnessed up close how he followed a vision and meticulously laid out steps, methods, and practices for others to follow, who could in turn build on that and add their own processes and designs.

Once someone told me that he heard a Buddhist professor say that nobody cares about Bernie anymore, that younger folks look for inspiration to other teachers. I had to laugh. First, because I knew that he didn’t care about that, especially towards the end of his life. Secondly, because fame and popularity are such a poor harvest, here and gone as fast as the latest reality shows on TV.

Some writers assert that what human beings fear most is to be forgotten. But in Sum: Forty Tales From the Afterlives, author David Eagleman presents one scenario in which we all die three times: When we cease breathing, when our bodies are disposed of one way or another, and finally, when our name has been mentioned for the last time, after which no one remembers us anymore. He envisions a kind of bardo in which we all wait to die for that third time in order to move on in some fashion.

Who are the ones who sit in that waiting room for a really long time? Maybe people like Abraham, Jesus, Gandhi, the Buddha, Rembrandt, Einstein, King. Also, Genghis Khan, Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin. Imagine them waiting and waiting, begging for release, but still stuck in that waiting room.

I always appreciated how the old Zen masters, when it was time to die, just died. Some wrote death poems: Illusion appears, illusion ceases, etc. No ambition at all to be remembered, read, taught, or memorialized forever and ever.

Put that burden down, and you’re as free as air. Chart your course, don’t worry that you’re the only one on the path, just keep on going. Others will follow, or they won’t, or they will without knowing your name. And if no one follows and the path disappears into the underbrush, the work of a lifetime isn’t gone. A breeze may pause while stroking the leaves, the heart roots of an oak will marvel at the ease of making their diagonal way underground. What was once a wave will join the ocean, teeming, bounteous, free.

You say that you still want to wait in that sitting room? Hope they have vending machines. Doritos, anyone?