My aunt recently passed away after a grueling battle with cancer that left her victorious but terribly weakened.  As I was looking for some words of comfort to share with my family, I came across three passages that resonated with me as a Buddhist. I shared the first two and kept the third for myself.

When one knows God, they are free:
their sorrows have an end, and birth and death are no more.
When in inner union they are beyond the world of the body,
then the third world, the world of the Spirit, is found, where the power of the All is,
and they have all: for they are one with the ONE.
–The Svetasvatara Upanishad

Don’t cry because it’s over,
Smile because it happened.
–Dr. Seuss

When the doctor gives me up,
When rituals no longer work,
When friends have given up hope for my life,
When anything I do is futile,
May I be blessed to remember my guru’s instructions.
–Attributed to a Panchen Lama

May my Aunt Beth have a swift passage through the bardos, and may her next incarnation provide her with the opportunity to love and nurture others as she did in this lifetime.  Om Ah Hum Vajra Guru Padma Siddhi Hum.

༄ཨོཾ་ཨཱཿ་ཧཱུྃ་བཛྲ་གུ་རུ་པངྨ་མ་སིདྡྷི་ཧཱུྃ།