{sincerely, L. Cohen}

In mid-October,  I had the same dream twice in one night. 

In the dream, I hit another car, head-on, and then, instead of stopping and being injured, I kept moving forward, like I was being pulled through a completely dark tunnel. In the dream, I was wondering how I was still moving forward and how I was not feeling any pain,  if I was still moving. I kept trying to feel my body, but I could not feel it, a strange and upsetting experience. I had that sensation, where you know something is serious, but you almost want to giggle – like when a person says something so offensive that you can't even believe it has been said and the shock makes your reaction an unexpected one. You don't know why, but you are stifling a strange, uncomfortable desire to laugh at something not laughable – a sort of jumble of too many emotions. 

I could not hear or see anything. And there was another sensation. It was something close, so physical and personal it was almost sexual, but also upsetting. Did you ever read The Golden Compass? When the children's daemon's get cut away and it is tantamount to loss of the soul – violent cutting away of the soul, molestation of the natural order of things? I felt that. Something spiritually and psychologically violent and gruesome and inexplicable. But without any accompanying physical pain. 

The second time I had the dream, I woke myself and got up to clean the kitchen. I've always heard that if you dream of dying three times, you die in real life. I didn't want to chance dreaming it again. 

All day,  I could not shake the dream. As I became more and more awake, I realized that what I experienced in the dream paralleled what the Tibetan Book of the Dead describes happening when you die. I once saw the most beautiful, illuminating documentary on the post-death process according to Tibetan Buddhism. Several pieces have become a permanent part of how I think about the world. First, the knowledge that hearing is the last sense to go. Also, that when we die, we must make a choice about which new body our soul will inhabit and that if we enter death fearfully, the chance that we will make a good choice is reduced.  I realized that I had felt death and that I had not experienced it fearfully. I was confused, and my conscious mind was having trouble processing, but there was no terror. Apart from my consciousness, the rest of "me" seemed to know just what to do. 

After the dream, I thought about death constantly. I could not quite figure out what I was supposed to learn from it, but I felt a sense of well-being and certainty that death isn't frightening,  just different. I also completely stopped texting while driving. I became much more careful and aware, much more present in my life. 

Two weeks later, on the highway, there was a rapid and unexpected stop and I was unable to brake fast enough. I hit another car head-on, exactly as I had in both dreams. 

I didn't die. No one died, or even got hurt. 

So far in my life, there have been a number of situations in which I think I was supposed to die or had the option of exiting and did not. It's a strange feeling, to escape death over-and-over. My go-to explanation is that in pre-birth planning, one writes a number of exits into their story. Somehow, I am able to see my exits and decide a little more consciously whether or not to use them or whether to stay and try to do more here. 

A couple weeks after the incident, Leonard Cohen died. Now, for the last year or so, it has become apparent to me that many of the famous folks that helped form my young mind are going to be leaving this planet – I've been preparing myself for it. His passing was one I knew would be tremendous. Though I never knew him, somehow, he always hit a place somewhere near my core, or maybe soul. He always had words of solace and inspiration when they were most needed. He was a kindred spirit and he was my companion through many otherwise lonesome hours. A modern, bohemian bodhisattva, providing the artistically inclined a small reprieve from the quotidian suffering. A light in the murky world.

Over this last year, we have experienced something that I think of as a dimming of the lights. One by one, bright lights dying out all over the globe. It is a strange thing the painful loss of someone you never met, yet whose mere existence in the world gave great comfort. 

I have this sense that many of us embedded exits for ourselves in the last year – knowing that what was coming was to be difficult. Some of us, either foolish or feeling strong enough to continue shedding some light in the dark times to come, have let the opportunities to exit pass. Only time will tell if we've been foolish to stay.

A final synchronicity – I began thinking incessantly about the film I loved so much about the Tibetan Book of the Dead, so I looked it up the weekend we got the final Leonard Cohen album and I had been listening to the songs alone in the darkness. I found the video and began watching. I had completely forgotten until I heard that singular,  golden voice, that Mr. Cohen had narrated the film.