We Are Family

When a family member dies it brings out the best and the worst in the rest of the family. Saturday, July 20th, my aunt died. It was very peaceful and all of our family was there. I had never actually witnessed someone die before. I was quite awestruck.
She had been quite mean to me in the couple of months up to her death. She had blamed me for ruining Christmas because I wanted to have a Christmas brunch since a lot of my family was traveling to Germany in the afternoon and she didn't want to get up early. She disowned me for trying to get her to see a doctor when her leg was all swollen. She'd hung the phone up on me countless times if I didn't give her the answer she wanted right away. She rejected my offer to quit my job and take care of her full time and then when she died she left everything to my brother and my grandfather.
When she died I was crushed. I remembered all of the good times from when I was a little kid and I would spend weekends at her house. How she took in unwanted animals and even children. But then gradually I remembered how mean she'd been to me over the past year, how she'd rejected me. Then my dad told me that my grandfather had told him not to expect a dime when he died; he wasn't getting anything. In all of this I felt a horrible lack of compassion. I was losing compassion for my family, I felt that they didn't have compassion for me or each other.
Meanwhile my yoga practice is like a yoyo. Sunday, the day after she died I connected with all of my bhandas and I was flying. My only problem was backbends. This old injury came back - literally right in the middle of my upper back where you really need to open and it prevents any sort of liberating movement in the upper back whatsoever. I managed to work it out a little bit without pushing. Then Monday morning mysore; I felt like I was made out of bricks or wood. Nothing wanted to move and I kept trying in hopes that it would open up. Nothing. I felt like I was doing battle with my body and I couldn't give in or I would have just ended up lying on the floor. I would have been better off. I should have found some compassion for myself, but instead I struggled to find the poses.
Later I struggled to find compassion for my imperfect family. No families are perfect. No one is perfect. But I felt like their blatant lack of compassion was making it that much more difficult for me to find compassion for them. And that' s when I realized I had to stop struggling and just let the compassion be there. Because the compassion is there, whether I feel it or not, it's just about letting go of the resistance and walking the right path.