Dying to live

Death often re-turns the spotlight back on life

A friend’s father is hospitalised with a ‘not so optimistic’ prognosis. She is understandably distraught; not knowing if he will survive and for how long. He has lived a good life. Yet in the first fury of fear there is an undercurrent of anger. Anger at all that could have been but was not. She is not unique in responding to imminent grief in this manner. Ironically, the death of a loved one gives rise to a tsunami of emotions leading to an often discomforting re-evaluation of life itself.

If, God forbid, you have had a roller coaster relationship with the loved one, as it routinely happens in real life, you could either come away with a better, deeper understanding of your own life values and step up to action them OR... spend the rest of your life alternating between blame and guilt.

A few years ago I was witness to the death of a family member; cruel in its sudden impact and relentless in its insistence on having to deal with a whole gamut of unwanted, unbidden emotions.

Every religion has its own template of rituals to send off their dead on their last journey. It may seem as if you are on auto-pilot going through the motions of these rituals. It is equally true that rituals can anchor you to the here and now when the only thing you feel inclined to do is dwell in the if only..., why me..., why couldn’t... and I wish...

It’s possible though, that a part of your ever-so-progressive thinking brain may rebel at the ludicrous irrelevance of some of these rituals. What could help is perhaps donating money or time or even better, time and money to a cause that carries the seed of creating a better life for someone and consequently recreating memories of better times.

It is only when the scheduled mourning is done that the real process of reckoning with the loss begins. And it’s never a pretty picture.

My dear friend Rose Gordon, who wears many hats, though I refer to her role as a grief counsellor, uses many tools to help relatives of terminally ill patients come to terms with loss. It’s best to begin the healing before the final good bye, she says. For me, the most beautiful take away from her tool box is the one where the patient and the family co-create a work of simple art – anything from a quilted wall hanging to a collage of photographs spanning a life time.

In the co-creation of this art they work through the palette of emotions and events that separate them; eventually bringing the acknowledgement that even while their minds were at war their souls have always looked out for each other. It is, Rose says, a powerful tool of acceptance and forgiveness, without words coming in the way of either.

My experience with sudden loss taught me the importance of practising this tool with all my relationships. I falter with amazing regularity.

A few years ago I visited a friend whose mother had passed away a week before after a long battle with dementia. The family had had enough time to prepare themselves and, in truth, not able to withstand her suffering they had started praying for an end to her misery. But what about the anguish of the impotent in providing relief; the anger of having to witness the disintegration of a strong and resourceful human being into a helpless bundle of incoherence?

My condolence visit was meant to honour a cherished relationship. Instead, it felt like eavesdropping on a conversation between life at death.

Life at Death

In the dead

The living see their own death

They see the beginning of the end

The end of many other beginnings

The death of them and their’s

And everything in between.

They see the way the dead lived their lives

Issues that they begat

And issues that they took up

What they counted for

Taxed for their weaknesses

Bonuses-accrued for good deeds.

They heave a sigh of relief

For the mercy of surviving

The memory of the dead

For all that could be

For all that was not

For all that is.

For all that will be

For all that will not be

For all that is their’s in this moment

For all that they will leave in the final one

For the love of their loved ones

And the fear of their phantoms.

But blessed are they who see

The arc of their soul’s moulting

As a butterfly flutters from a cocoon

Good karma weaving designs

For, in this they have seen

The beginning of The End – Moksha.

Our interactions in this life, even the most difficult ones, or rather, especially the most difficult ones, are designed so that we may learn those lessons that got left out of the syllabus of past births. . How willing are we to learn these? 

What fun it would be if the Universe one day said: You’ve done your lessons; now here’s your gift?