Holding Hands in the Forest

A few weeks ago, our family lost a close relative and dear friend to covid.

After hearing the news, I went to Christine’s Facebook page. A few months earlier she posted, “I can’t believe I made it to Medicare.” Sadly, only a few months later, she is gone.

I try to imagine her last days of life. Were her husband and children able to be with her, …hold her hand, and accompany her? What thoughts, emotions, and pain were passing through her as life was slipping away? And now, for those left behind, what are they experiencing in their shock, loss, and grief? Certainly, not the future they envisioned.

What I do know, is that my imaginings cannot come close to answering these questions.

It has been a few weeks since her passing, yet I remain saddened on too many accounts. I still feel off-balance and tear up when I reflect upon the times that Christine made me feel appreciated and important. It was her nature and personality. And this memory is what remains of her – in me.

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If, or when, I am ever called on to hold someone’s hand as they pass from bodily existence; What would the sacredness of the moment expect of me?

In these ponderings, I’ve come to realize that we are already accompanying each other on our journey toward death. We claim this from our very moment of conception, as we began accompanying our mother on her journey toward death, and she accompanies us. As well as our fathers, albeit in a different way. Then at birth, we join the rest of humanity on theirs, and they with us.

It is not when given a terminal diagnosis or when reaching a certain age that this walk begins. It has begun at conception.

I do not focus on (my) death as a morbid obsession nor as a doomsday event. Grace shows me, there is no life without death. It’s a package deal. You do not get one without the other. Although what can ease the journey is a continual “self-emptying or letting go” of what is no longer life-giving.

Behaviors and attitudes that may have been useful at an earlier stage in life often become heavy baggage later.

As I age, my body and spirit tell that it can no longer carry the loads it once did. So, to me it makes great sense what Joan Chittister writes in her book, The Gift in Years; “One thing this period is not about is diminishment, though physical diminishment is surely a part of it, … we are a great deal more than our bodies but it can take a lifetime to learn that.”

Instead of “preparing for the end,” I choose to envision my walk forward as “generative” rather than of diminishment; a liberating and unbinding journey of living and life.

In Kathleen Dowling-Singh’s book, The Grace in Dying, she writes that each person’s (inner) journey to our life’s passing is a “walk alone.” I believe this.

I also hope that there is someone holding my hand through this passage. Regardless, this inner journey is “as it is” and sufficient in Grace. Amen

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(My friend Sher C. offers the following.)

Mindful Bereavement

I hope this finds you well!

Below is a short piece I wrote for our hospice volunteer newsletter and the designated theme was mindfulness and resilience. I took the tree picture in central Oregon this past Sunday. 

Peace to all of you, Sher

Mindful bereavement is a tricky thing.

First of all, the frontal lobe of the grieving brain just doesn’t work right. The firing rate drops which alerts the emotional brain to jump into action: “I can do it! I can make all those decisions and complete all those cognitive tasks!” No, no, it cannot, but it tries anyway, and this is when the grief fog, the grief brain, the less-than-mindful brain, takes over. The simplest things become too hard and just too exhausting.

In this situation, a person believes, “I’m going crazy and/or I have dementia.” This is normal grief. This is what happens to a human being when she/he/they undergoes the most profound of experiences: the death of their loved one.

We are built to love and to endure. We are wired to be in a community and to thrive. Death comes along and just blows it all apart.

However, and this is huge, we humans are astonishingly resilient. The same brain that temporarily loses its battle with grief fog and mayhem is the same brain that eventually reconvenes itself into a new normal and a new way of functioning. Once again it becomes mindful of all it has lost and all it has endured. It focuses on what can be resurrected from the mournful process of healing. And it does not do this alone.

It completes this extraordinary remapping of life with the help of breath, movement, and the beating heart that remains. Within this reworking, this reshaping, this rebuilding of our bodies, minds, hearts, and souls, we begin to look different. Just like this gorgeous old, twisted tree in central Oregon, we endure all that happens. We’re twisted and shaped in ways we never expected, and on the outside, we might look brittle and dry.

However, as unbelievable as it seems and despite the fact that our loved one is still dead and we’re standing a bit crooked, we’re still here! Yes, mindful bereavement is a tricky thing, but not impossible. Never impossible.

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Another offering from a friend, Lynn Ann R.

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Reflection Question:

How do you experience the accompanying of another on their journey toward life’s passage?

How has it shaped you?