** Won't you please share the joy of WYFP by recommending?
WYFP is our community's Saturday evening gathering to talk about our problems, empathize with one another, and perhaps share advice. Everyone and all sorts of troubles are welcome. May we find peace and healing here. :-)
I hope nobody will find this topic, er, morbid, really I hope it can be life-affirming.
I'm 28 years old and I really have not faced the death of a close loved one in my life. Issues of death and dying seem a little remote. And yet, it seems very important. I rented a wonderful HBO movie from Netflix once called
Wit, which is about a former university professor dying of cancer, and the indignity and loneliness of her situation, and her facing up to keen guilt and regret about her life, with wit and humanity. It was pretty much the most cathartic movie I have ever seen; I remember it as an extended meditation on what it means to die well, to die reconciled to one's life, to "come home" from sophisticated grownup concerns to a state of innocent need to love and be loved.
I've also wondered about how to be with a person who is dying. It's kind of a scary thought--how can one presume to know how to be a companion or a help for someone in their penultimate hour? If they are your close family member then maybe you have some idea, but what if they are someone you know less well? I came across a gentle little book at a used book sale called "Healing the Dying" that touched me so much that I had to buy it. It's by a wise nun who was with many elderly Sisters as they were dying, and who saw her role as "releasing" people to die peacefully--like a death midwife. I thought I'd try to summarize the various ways Sister Mary Jane went about this.
Forgive. The basic way of restoring relationships, restoring our love for each other. It sucks to die bitter; it's like "taking with you" the ways people have wounded you. Forgive and you die whole.
Give away your paradise. What has been your bliss in life? Pass it on somehow, and know that it lives on in someone else.
Say goodbye to friends. Connect with the people you carry with you in your heart, and in whose hearts you live on. Relationships are the connective fiber of life.
Don't be afraid. Some people are very afraid to die. Sister Mary Jane describes one woman who she felt very uncomfortable to be with because of the woman's anxiety and self-discomfort. By remaining the woman and "dying" with her, entering into her experience, and praying meditatively, her patient companionship brought peace to the dying person.
Go home. We feel at peace and connected to our life in familiar surroundings.
Be grateful. Remember the times when you loved and were loved, and tell your life story with gratitude.
"Into your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit." Die generously: give your life forward lovingly, without fear or clinging or looking back, and you die in peace.
Right now though, I hope you're all living in peace. :-) What's your effing problem tonight?