The Day I Learned How to Die
On the Gift of Trusting Loss
Dear Reader;
Growing old is indeed a blessing, and at the same time, an exercise in loss.
At the beginning of every life, there are a number of years when we do not think about death. Unless we have known the tragedy of a precipitous grief in childhood, such as losing a sibling or parent to accident or illness, we tend not to think of death until we are past our twenties or thirties. For most, it is not until we scale the arch of mid-life that death comes to live with us, in one way or another, for the rest of our lives.
My first taste of letting go was a cat, Patches, who died from cancer when I was six. Then, so very sadly, a young friend from our circle of summer playmates died. A radiant, kind-hearted boy who had been ill all his life, I didn’t know him well but liked him immensely. Though I was young at the time, I still marveled at the idea that someone so pure and special would leave so soon. I no longer see this arrangement as suspect; I understand it is exactly how it works.
Next was my brooding, solitary grandfather, whose passing left a strange emptiness in my belly. I was afraid of him, and there was a distance between us. But my maternal grandmother, Lily, passed when I was newly away at university, and her death left me wretched.
The afternoon I drove off to another city to live in residence, I caught her crying, something I had never before seen. She brushed at her eyes and told me not to pay attention to an old woman. I was shocked to see someone in our very British family show such a visible expression of love, and I was confronted by the awareness of Lily’s love for me, that I was such a big part of her world.
I had not known how much my Granny would miss me until that moment. I had not thought that she could die, and I would not be there. Like most teenagers, I was awash in my own sensitive nature, and I didn’t treasure her presence enough. I just assumed she loved me, and she always would. So when she had a stroke, became unable to communicate, and then passed away, I was unprepared to lose her.
The day I walked with my family down the aisle of the funeral home chapel, and it registered in my awareness that her body lay in the wooden box at the front of the room, the enormity of her loss hit me. The casket was closed, but still I saw her. There was her slim, gentle frame, sweet eyes, and soft grey hair, always held back by a black ribbon.
But at the same time, she was not there. I would never again hear her voice. I would never touch her, sit beside her on a saggy couch as she read the newspaper with the fat, black and white cat called John sprawled across her lap. She would never again make me tea with sugar, read me poetry, help me with a school project, sew me a doll, or mend my dress. She would never again, in her quiet way, listen to me, or simply sit with me for hours. She had left me alone in this world.
When the service finally ended and my family made it out to the parking lot and stood in a circle, I could not hold myself any longer. I collapsed in a wail that I know shocked and disturbed everyone. No one quite knew what to do with me. I think it was my big brother who finally held me. I honestly can't remember. Grief was never discussed or acknowledged in our family, though I later saw that my Granny’s passing left my mother’s heart in pieces too.
I had begun my journey of understanding death.
For those of us blessed to live in a developed country not torn apart by war, there is a common pattern of loss as we age and move through life. First, the grandparents go. Then perhaps an acquaintance or distant relative. Then our parents, which is a big one. Then teachers, mentors, the parents of our friends, the friends of our parents, our aunts, uncles, and neighbours.
Along the way, we lose our four-legged family members at a much more rapid pace. If we have had many pets in our lives, as we grow older, these losses start to pile up like a collision on an icy highway.
Here is my list. In addition to guinea-pigs, hamsters, and rats too numerous to mention, in the realm of cats and dogs I have said goodbye, not just to Patches, but to Fozdick, Tashi, Farley, Pumpkin, and Shandy. Good-bye to Chelsea, Lucy, Shady, Sophie, Stella, Sheba, and my grouchy, weird, adorable Samantha. Most recently, I let go of my beloved Brody, whom I still grieve. When I look at my present companion, Juniper, I realize that she may outlive me. She is still young, a longer-lived breed, while I move into elderhood. Something to consider. It would be a different kind of loss to leave her behind.
Then we have the grave losses, the monumental ones, a spouse, a treasured friend, or most tragically, a child. These losses, too, are as familiar to me as if the days were carved into my heart. I have lost the kind of friend some never find in a lifetime. The kind who will not leave your side when you are ill, a friend who thinks of you every day, the one you can talk to for hours about the most important ideas in the Universe. I have lost a child before she was ready to be born from my body. I have lost loved ones to mental illness and addiction. I have watched my children lose their dearest friends, and I have lost good friends who surprised me, who I believed were too full of life to die. But they, too, said goodbye.
When I first married, my husband’s grandmother was a pillar in her community. A strong, aristocratic woman who had escaped Europe during the Second World War, leaving a life of opulence behind, she lived longer than most of her peers. She told me that she had been asked to offer so many eulogies she had lost count, because she outlived everyone she knew, except her daughter and her offspring. A long life was her gift, yet with every year that passed, she was more alone. This, too, is the truth of human life. Does the soul choose to leave early, to be the one who is grieved, or do we choose to remain, and be the one who does the grieving?
It is true what they say, that inside we never grow old. That there is an age when we feel we came to truly embody ourselves, perhaps 27 or 33, and from that age onward, every time we look in the mirror, we are puzzled to see that same young being, but with a face and body that gets older and older. The reality of our physical decline never really matches our inner essence again, once we pass that threshold, and this allows us a certain degree of pleasant denial, along with some shock and depression when we shop for a bathing suit, or get a new haircut and have to sit staring at the mirror for an hour and a half.
Yet perhaps this disconnect also offers us grace, as the losses of our lives bring us opportunity, over and over again, to sense how we doubt, where our faith is weak, and the ways we have attached to this material world as if it somehow holds an impossible answer.
In traditional Buddhist families, the loved ones of a dying person do not succumb to expressions of grief at the bedside, as this could distract from a peaceful transition. In Hinduism, traditional rituals must guide a loved one as they pass, in order to ensure a blessed afterlife awaits. We do indeed face a reckoning as we prepare to leave the body, and all our attention is called to this surrender.
I was once hospitalized with severe asthma, and one day, a seriously ill woman was wheeled in and lifted onto the empty bed in my double room, as all the triage beds in the hospital emergency ward were full. Like me, she was also having trouble breathing, but her condition was critical. A nurse pulled the curtain between our beds closed, but the room was small, and only a few feet separated us. I listened as a team of medical professionals did everything they could to save her.
The doctor was young and inexperienced; I could feel his fear and agitation. As an intuitive healer, I was not afraid to be present during a crisis, but to be positioned as a hidden observer in this situation was unusual. I closed my eyes to receive guidance, realizing this was no accident. I was present with my dying neighbour for a reason.
The young doctor quickly ordered an emergency intubation in the hopes of helping her breathe. The woman was older, I would guess in her 70s, and she kept trying to speak through her panic. She also repeatedly attempted to push the doctor and the nurses away, flailing with her arms. Soon, they strapped her to the bed in restraints. The nurses talked to her, trying to calm her and assure her that they were doing everything in their power to help her, and yet I heard something very different in her garbled cries. She kept saying no, no, while trying to push everyone away. They thought she was afraid, but I immediately could tell that she wanted them to leave her alone, that she actually wanted to die.
At this point, I connected to her spirit and saw that she was eagerly trying to leave her body. She was ready to go and did not want their interference, but no one was listening to her. The young doctor, in his fear and guilt, was frantically trying everything he knew to keep her alive. The first time her heart stopped, I felt his panic escalate. He reached for the defibrillator and shocked her heart awake again, till it began to beat once more. I could hear the weak beep on the monitor, the song of a soul that was ready to rest.
And so I did what I know how to do best, I communicated with my neighbour via her spirit, and I asked her if I could help. She immediately responded and told me that she wanted to leave, but she had questions, fears that kept her confused about whether she had the right to die. And so I asked her to share those fears with me, and together, one by one, we examined them and helped her understand that there were no errors in this life, and that she had permission to surrender to her illness, to return to her Creator, anytime she chose.
Then I began to observe a pattern. Every time she shared a fear with me, when we talked about that fear and I helped her find a resolution, her heart would stop. The beep on the monitor would flatline, and the medical team would leap into action once more.
Her fears were simple and human, the kind of concerns every one of us would have as we confront the idea that our present incarnation on this earth is done. This happened six times in repetition until finally I felt something very large and new speaking from a deep place within.
She said, I have never had children. I did not have children in this life, and this was my greatest sadness. I am an old woman, and I know this is foolish, but how do I let go, how do I give up my dream that I will one day be a mother to a child? By this time, she was surrounded by guides and angels, and the air in the room felt thick and holy. I had opened my laptop and begun to play some of my channelled music, a soft sound healing chant called Peace, as I knew it would speak to her desire to experience an ascending frequency.
I could feel that the music helped her, and she was becoming stronger in her readiness to transition. In that moment, I connected to two souls who stated that they were waiting for her and would become her children in her next lifetime. They already loved her and knew her, and were ready for her to be reborn. I told her this, I said, You have children, and they are waiting for you. Go to them. I felt her receive these words.
The next moment, her heart stopped once more, and this time, everything the medical team tried to do failed. This time, the heart monitor sang a steady, peaceful tone of release.
Then I witnessed the most extraordinary, and perfectly beautiful thing. High above her bed, just beneath the ceiling of the room, a huge angel appeared, powerful and winged. It was the unmistakable, muscular yet gentle form of Archangel Michael. From this presence, a wide beam of light descended to the bed like a spotlight, and I watched her soul leave her body, spiralling upward within the beam of light like a feather in the vortex of a slow-motion tornado. She was pulled magnetically up into the arms of Michael, where he gathered her into an embrace and the two of them ascended through the ceiling and beyond.
The young doctor gave up his efforts, quietly telling the team to cease, and there was silence. I could feel a sigh of relief travel through the nurses in the room, some of them much more experienced than the doctor, and they knew when it was time to let go. As I was still in a state of deep connectivity, I travelled around the circle of these caring souls and whispered to each one in turn, to grant them ease. I finished with the young doctor and assured him that he had acted out of responsibility and care, and that his patient was now at peace.
As they began to roll medical equipment out of the room, one of the nurses parted the curtain and poked her head in. She nodded toward the computer and asked, What was that remarkable music? And then she asked if I was OK, that she was very sorry I had been exposed to such a difficult experience. I told her I was fine, that I have learned to become comfortable with death, from the work I do in this life. I explained that I had connected to her patient and that she was ready to go, that her guides and angels were all around.
The nurse's eyes grew wide with recognition. She said, I knew it! I felt this incredible presence in the room. She said, It was as if the room grew warm and full of light, and I knew she was going to be okay.
We smiled at one another, and soon my neighbour was wheeled away.
The chapter closed for me when, an hour or two later, I heard someone in the hallway outside my open door. A woman had arrived, a lone visitor, looking for my deceased neighbor. She was met by a nurse; it was my neighbor’s sister, her next of kin. The nurse conveyed her condolences. They spoke quietly for a while, and then I heard the nurse ask, Is there anyone else you would like me to contact. Anyone else who should be here? The sister said, No, other than me, she was alone. She had always wanted children, but never had any.
The thought crossed my mind to slip out of bed, take her sister by the hand and say, Her children are waiting for her. She has gone to them, and they will be united. But I felt such an intrusion was presumptuous, and quite likely misunderstood, so I kept my peace.
Soon, I was well enough to leave the hospital, and I, who usually resisted Western medicine, had come to understand the reason for my presence there in the first place. I was exactly where I needed to be at exactly the right time. I had been offered a window into the beauty of death and how welcome it can be, if only we allow our fears to dissolve, if only we can remember and reclaim our faith in the power of letting go.
There is nothing outside of perfection in this life. No matter how dark or painful, the part of us that can choose to trust and to elevate, even our experiences of grave loss, is the part of us that has remembered we are one with our Creator. It is death that teaches us about the immortality of the soul, and there is no greater gift to help us live our lives fully than to accept this great truth.
And so the moment comes when we lift up our broken heart and we decide not to look back but turn our gaze beyond not to simply remember what seems lost but rather to join in the journey of expansion to understand that love is never still but always flowing and the choice to float with love wherever she goes into the abyss and beyond may bring each single tear home to a vast sea of acceptance for Love has not gone anywhere that we are now free to travel along as the beloved leads us their kisses marking the path each one a closer surrender to a Home more vast than all our dreams could tell And so dear one who has led me to this shore I thank you I prepare myself to travel with you once more These steps you so softly and graciously took those last breaths you so gently offered in surrender to our separation now guide me for though my flesh my body still breathes this air I know it is but a moment till oceans of love will swallow me whole and the confusions of the blindness of grief will fall away and I will find you again beyond form beyond pain beyond the fear that love could be lost for I will know you by your kiss now the universal touch as I join you in your freedom our eternity for this is love this is Love This is Love ~ excerpt THE OCEAN REMAINS
To every spirit, two-legged and four-legged, whom I have had the privilege to love, forgive me my spiritual immaturity, remind me of your eternal presence, and give me the strength to keep on living, even if I am the last one left alive on this Earth. I will hold this space as long as I am needed, even though I cannot wait to see you again. I love you and release you all.
much love, Adi