Death and Dying

I just got an email from my friend Sally. She is in Houston with her daughter. This is a difficult time because the daughter's 48 year old husband is dying of cancer and has only hours or a few days to live. He's being moved to a hospice today. His two children are still in high school and they've had to grow up quick. They have stepped up to the bat and have helped take care of him and their mother.

Sally and her husband just finished taking care of her "Aunt" Betty....who was sick for over a year with cancer. Do death's really run in 3's? I've always heard it. It's probably just a wife's tale. Just this week, Sally's brother's son's wife passed away suddenly of a young age. She was well one day and gone the next. Her 3 children are in elementary and in high school. They had no warning their mother was sick and no time to prepare or say goodbye. I'm sure, had their mother known, she would have talked about life and her hopes and dreams for their future. She won't be here for their graduation , their weddings or to see the grandchildren as they come along.

Which makes us aware that life is never a given. Death is just as much a part of life as birth. One we celebrate and one we mourn. The older you get the more deaths you experience. In some, it's a tragic death and in others it's just a normal passing from one existence to another.

I remember a science lab. The professor was changing a liquid into a gas visible by a blue color. As the liquid bubbled and turned into a blue vapor, I had a pivotal moment. We may be in the physical body one day but turn into another element the next. We are never really gone but continue to change into different molecules.

Might our molecules continually change or compress into different combinations? Can we change them ourselves through our cellular connection? Is there a cosmic consciousness?

My dad was so afraid of dying that he would have nightmares and scream during the night. As a child, I heard his cries through the bedroom walls. There was no one to comfort me and I felt so tiny huddled under the covers.

No wonder I carried a fear of death that was profound for most of my life. Nothing in the bible ever calmed my fears. The after life was always conditional. If you didn't believe in Jesus, you were doomed to hell. I thought of all the poor souls that were born before Jesus and down in hell because of their birth dates. I thought of all the other people on earth who were of other religions. They always seemed nice to me and I couldn't understand why they would be in hell. It was a very confusing time and frightful.

Then, I came upon psychics who proposed to have contact with those who had passed over. For me, it all came together. They try to contact us but usually we are so afraid that we deny the incident or refuse to acknowledge they have tried to contact us. I remember when Marvin died. It was several days afterwards that the phone in our bedroom where he had died began to ring. The hairs on my arms stood up. The phone was disconnected there. Yet, it was ringing.

I firmly believe that he was just trying to keep in touch. I have no proof but there have been many other contacts from friends and family who have passed away over the years.

RL, who works for me, was at his mother's bed side when she died. She'd suffered from diabetes for years and had been on dialysis. Finally, she refused to take it any more. As she lay dying, all the family was around her. RL said he heard a lot of birds chirping and asked everyone if they heard them. They didn't. When the nurse came in, she said RL's mother had passed away. RL told her about the birds and she said, "We'll put that down as the time of death."

When my dad died, he sat up suddenly in his hospital bed and opened his arms as if he saw something. He said "Jesus, Jesus, take me!" And, then he died.

I am glad that my dad didn't die alone. He wasn't afraid any more.

When my mother was getting close to the end of her life, she told me that Momma came to visit her. She was so glad her mother was there. She was in her right mind, not on any medication. Just the simple awe of her mother being there. Granny had been dead for years but I firmly believe that she came to take her daughter home. Mother died a few days later.

A longer life gives us the advantage of experience if we accept it at face value and don't try to analyze it to death. No pun intended.