Reflecting on Death

Rose of Sharon

“Are you afraid to die?”

I was speaking to my dear friend of twenty-eight years.

She blinked her eyes for yes, which was her version of a head nod these days.

We were alone in her house in the dining room that had turned into a makeshift bedroom as even using the chairlift to get upstairs was too difficult now with how stiff she had become.

Sharon was diagnosed almost two years earlier with ALS, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, commonly known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. It’s an illness without a cure that renders the afflicted increasingly helpless until paralysis causes death.

Her decline was rapid and though her body could not be cured, her soul was healed. She had often struggled to keep up with three kids and a house and a job and, as a result, she frequently felt not good enough. Voila! She manifested a disease that made it impossible to keep up with anything, but she fully realized just how good enough she was!

Unconditional love poured in from a myriad of directions; and a more gracious, joyous patient I have never seen! She learned her value did not depend on what she could do but on what she was, a beautiful worthy being.

A multitude of people emerged to help the family through, cooking meals and driving the kids to their events while her husband held down a full time job. Of course, Sharon could not be home alone so there were caretakers that came in and out for different tasks.

Weekends when I periodically stayed there, I would find myself in the middle of Grand Central Station on some days, people dropping off meals or picking up empty dishes, the phone ringing and taking messages, preparing food for everyone, and on and on, but all the time focused first on Sharon. Everything revolved around her. It had to.

That day in the dining room the house was quiet, and I asked her if she wanted to do a little meditation exercise with me to help with her fear. I taught her how to meditate years earlier and made her cassette tapes with meditations on them that she relied on, especially during this time. But this was my first death meditation. It went like this, with plenty of pause after each step.

Close your eyes.

Breathe in and out a few times. Deeply.

Breathe in and out a few times. Relaxed.

Observe your breath, your belly rising, and falling.

Relax your head, jaw, neck and shoulders. Let the tension drop down. Breathe.

Relax your upper back.

Lower back.

Let the tension drop down into the earth.

Breathing, easy.

Relax your pelvis, legs, and feet.

Feel your body heavy on the furniture. Relaxed.

Now put your focus on your nose and sense the pulsing energy in the nose.

Relax and smile into it. Be easy. Keep the corners of the lips up.

Shift attention to your lips. Feel the sensations pulsing there. Stay easy. Smiling with the lips.

Go to hands. Feel the pulsing there. Stay with it. Smiling into the hands.

Focus on the thighs. Smiling into them. Feel the vibrating energy there.

Drop down to your feet. Pulsing. Easy. Smiling.

Let go of the focus on the body and just be aware of the sensations of the whole body pulsing.

Smiling.

Easy. Smiling.

This is the space of death. No body. Pure energy. Easy. Smiling.

Life IS. It never dies.

Love IS. This love is you.

Everyone and everything meets here in life, in love, in many forms but one energy.

When ready, open your eyes slowly, halfway. Be aware of the outer world of movement at the same time as the inner space of quietude.

After a time in the stillness, palpable and sweet, I inquired, “You ok?”

I looked over at her, and her glow said it all.

Sharon passed over ten years ago now and I hear her in her oldest child, now twenty-two, in his voice and mannerisms when I call to touch base with him. The last time I saw Sharon alive she was propped up on the couch in the family room while a bunch of twelve year olds ran around in the backyard celebrating his twelfth birthday. She always worried about him as he suffers from anxiety and needs support but he was in and out of the house showing us his list of who was playing what game and taking charge. He was happy.

“See, he is growing up. He is so happy today. He is going to be OK,” I said.

Less than three weeks later, she passed away in that dining room become bedroom, where she felt peaceful about passing and I felt joyous about living.

I gave the eulogy at her memorial service. It was cathartic for me to spend the two days until the memorial writing and crying and crying and writing. We met in college as roommates; and I knew her longer, and even in many ways better, than her husband.

I could feel her there that day, smiling, especially when I took an extra long drink of wine from the chalice during holy communion. This one is for you, Sharon. And for me.

I closed her eulogy with a poem I had written for her children. It’s a reflection on death called “The Backwards Butterfly.”

When we die, We’re like the butterfly. We leave our cocoon To be something new. Not to fly in the sky above But to be in the inner sea of love.

Shimmering, shining, Love is here now. Life is good.

Shimmering, shining, Life never dies But bodies would.

Feel the life now, Be the love, Shimmering, shining, All around.

In the life now, In the shimmering, shining, All the love Can always be found.

Shine on, Sharon.

Shine on, everyone.