Let's Talk About Death

In the past four years since the pandemic began, many of my loved ones have made their transition back to the Spirit World.

Advanced in age and frail with illness, they went to their deaths without fear and with perfect clarity of mind. After all, they had always taught us that the yogi and the shaman share the same goal: to learn to journey in the spirit world so that at death we travel back with full awareness and lucidity.

I wish so much I could have been present at their transition. Instead, all I was able to do was attend memorial services for them on Zoom with fellow students and friends. We meditated, prayed and sang them home with blessings from a distance.

I´d never had so many loved ones die in such a short period of time, I guess it’s to be expected as I near age 50. A few months is not enough to cry the losses, celebrate the lives, and sit in the quiet stillness of that altered state, that sacred condition called mourning. The waves of grief have been so relentless that I have not fully metabolized what these deaths mean to me. I suspect one of the lessons is that I am becoming an elder, that it is my time to occupy my role as teacher and guide.

I’ve only been present at one death. It was such a precious, life-changing experience, that it made me wish to be present at the death of all my loved ones. If only I could be so lucky.

A decade ago my partner Todd’s mom, Barb, was diagnosed with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig´s Disease. ALS is an especially painful condition because the person’s voluntary functions fail while their mind stays clear, aware of the rapid losses. Barb’s children, who adored her, were more scared of her suffering than of having to live without her.

One day we got a call that Barb had a health crisis requiring emergency surgery. She was very frail and her recovery was not assured. Todd and I flew to New York and drove upstate to the hospital nearest to the family farm.

Barb was feeble, but clearly relieved have all her children around her. Amid the monitors and cables, Todd kissed and held his mom, eyes filled with tears.

In the previous months Barb had been losing her ability to swallow and talk. She’d been a food lover and brilliant cook with a curvy figure, but now her body lay under the white sheets, small and thin. She could not speak at all, but I sensed she was worried, so I facilitated a conversation. “Blink once for yes and twice for no,” I said, remembering that the author of The Diving Bell and The Butterfly had written a whole book communicating by blinking his eyes.

“Are you scared?”

“Yes.”

“Are you worried about us?”

“No.”

“Are you worried about my dad?” asked Todd.

“Yes.”

Todd was able to say all the important things. “My sisters and I will take care of each other and dad. Anything that needed to be forgiven, already is. We love you. We understand it is your time to go. Thank you for being such a wonderful mom.”

At two in the morning we drove to the farm to get some sleep, but half way there a nurse called from the hospital, “Barb has taken a turn. You might want to come right back.”

We rushed back. Barb’s breathing had become raspy and irregular. Sitting at either side of the bed, Todd and I each held one of her hands as her breathing became less frequent. Sometimes she stopped breathing for several seconds.

I liked Barb very much, but hadn't known her for long. This allowed me to witness her death without the heavy grief that her children and husband were experiencing. I was a quiet observer, taking everything in, accepting the reality that Barb was at the end of a very rich and eventful life, surrounded by her loved ones, and that her departure at this moment would save her from greater suffering from her painful condition.

I was a big meditator in the healing tradition of Kundalini Yoga at the time, and went into meditation, attaining a state of neutrality and communicating that peace to Barb and her grieving family. Immediately I felt a change in the air, as if the room was crowded with spirits come to welcome her back.

Barb’s breaths became slower, more labored and more infrequent. Then there was no more breath. Todd met my gaze, infinite sadness in his eyes.

I knew her body no longer lived, but I could feel Barb’s presence still in the room. I knew she was taking in the scene, communicating her love to her children while feeling the pull to ascend.

Todd left the room to tell his sisters and father. A nurse came in to check Barb’s body and they called for a coroner. I remained in the room, meditating, keeping Barb company until I felt her truly leave and there was a sense of absence. Her small body lay on the bed. Her soul had departed. Her essence, however, would remain forever in her children and grandchildren, in all the people and places she touched.

In the days that followed, grief flowed, as Todd, his father and his siblings dealt with the inescapable, mundane details of what must be done with a loved one´s body, possessions, etc.

I still felt we were held in a special liminal place where everything is more precious and more luminous. A few days later we held a celebration of Barb’s life for her extended family and friends. I helped her grandkids, nephews and nieces write her love letters. We sent them up with balloons. Sorry, Mother Earth, I didn't know any better back then. There were endless stories, laughter and tears. I inherited some beautiful stuffed animals from Barb’s collection, which now belong to my daughter.

And although my relationship with Todd ended some years after that, love never ends, and Barb’s gift of allowing me to be present at her death and ascension remains a precious memory.

When the pandemic was declared in March of 2020, we were obligated by the quarantine to spend less time socializing and more time alone. Even those of us who were pent up with our family members or roommates were forced to go within, to spend more time in our inner space. We were being asked the questions: If Covid comes knocking on our door and it is our time to go, are we satisfied with how we've lived? Are we ready to depart? And for those of us still here, can we bear solitude? Do we enjoy our own company?

One of the saddest parts of this time has been the inability to visit my older friends, some of whom may be reading this now. I’m so sorry, dear ones! I have several beloved friends in their 70s and 80s who love my daughter and used to delight in our visits. After the shelter-in-place order, we understood the prudent thing was to stay away from their homes and assisted living places. Even when adults were permitted to enter, masked and distant, the fact that moms like me lost the ability to hire a nanny when needed and our childcare hours shrank—or disappeared altogether—we were not free to go alone. Loss of childcare and greater responsibilities at home meant I couldn´t even keep up with calling or writing to them. I am now vaccinated, but my 4-year-old is not, so contact is still impossible.

A lot of elders remain isolated, and patients who have died of Covid in hospitals have not been able to see their families or say goodbye to their loved ones. Health workers are tormented by guilt, questioning their own goodness, because they had to say no to patients’ last requests, or offer paltry alternatives, like a few minutes of a videocall on a tablet.

The idea of people dying alone without their loved ones in hospitals, or unattended in their homes—in places where the pandemic has raged to the point of overwhelming medical services—is one of the most painful.

And yet I believe nobody dies alone.

All shamanic cultures of the world agree on this point: the greatest intimacy we can experience as humans, is with our own soul. Call it guardian angel, higher power, oversoul, or Self, the perfect and immortal piece of God that you are in essence, never leaves you.

Anyone who has been present at death knows the look of recognition that can come over the dying person's eyes as they are being visited by their protective spirits and departed loved ones, come to escort them back home. Hospice workers and hospital chaplains like my husband know this phenomenon well.

There is such a dissonant relationship with death in mainstream culture. The allopathic medical system—which has given us many healing wonders, including the vaccines that now protect some of us from Covid—has overemphasized the avoidance of death and the prolongation of life, even when these inflict more suffering on patients and families.

Some institutionalized religions say eternal life is possible, but only if you follow their directions and prescriptions. Science says death is an end, a final frontier after which there is nothing. Existentialists agree. Shakespeare put it bluntly, “Ay, but to die and go we know not where; To lie in cold obstruction and to rot.” (Measure for Measure Act III Scene I)

But we need not remain confused.

As a species, we humans know a lot about death. All the ancient shamanic cultures and some of the world's religions teach that the place we go after we die is the same place we came from before we were born. The soul is eternal and the body is temporary. After inhabiting this body, we go back to the place where our soul resides in the Spirit World and then we reincarnate again, in a new body.

We have not only the death guidebooks left to us by the ancients, like the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying and the Egyptian Book of the Dead. Just pick up Many Lives, Many Masters by Brian Weiss or Journey of Souls by Michael Newton, brilliant hypnotherapists and past life regressionists, to read detailed accounts of reincarnation and life between lives.

Even the Christian Bible contained accounts of reincarnation before Emperor Justinian declared it heresy in 543 A.D. and the Church took a decade to “correct” the Bible texts and ratify his declaration.

Image Caption: Death and Birth paintings by Alex Grey

Although I´ve never been Catholic, I grew up celebrating Día de Muertos. The Day of the Dead in its current form was born of the indigenous Mexican traditions, overlaid with a syncretic blend of Catholicism. In Mexico our relationship with death is irreverent, funny, defiant and also worshipful.

On Día de Muertos we build altars to honor our dead with their photographs and mementos as well as their favorite food and drink. Knowing that at the midpoint between the Fall Equinox and the Winter Solstice the veil between the worlds is thinnest and our ancestors come to visit, we prepare to receive them and feast with them one more time.

We eat sugar skulls with our name on them, a reminder that we too will die. We write humorous Calaverita poems for our friends, predicting their deaths based on their quirky habits and unique personalities. We place on the altar figurines of skeletons performing the activities of daily life: a skeleton doctor performing surgery on skeleton patients, a skeleton mom stirring a pot while her skeleton children pull on her apron, a skeleton vendor selling balloons at the park.

We have fun with death and we also grieve deeply when it happens. In Mexico you can hire additional criers, or plañideras, to make sure grief flows abundantly enough when a loved one has departed. An indelible childhood memory is of watching a funeral cortege go past my grandma´s farm, which was next to the village cemetery, and hearing Lorenzo, her talking parrot, make crying sounds when he saw the mourners in black walk slowly by. The parrot wailed as the women cried into their handkerchiefs, their heads covered with lace mantillas.

If you go to a cemetery in Mexico on Mother’s Day or Children’s Day, you´ll find scores of Mariachi bands playing for the departed mothers or the “innocent saints” who left too soon. It´s not that we think souls stay in cemeteries, but that they are places of remembrance. In Mexico we talk and sing to the dead because we know they can hear us. We know the cycle of life and death is just the soul’s game of peekaboo until we meet again.

In the deep mystical traditions of Mexico, like Nahualism, there is an understanding that we go through many deaths in one lifetime. When we are born, we die to the spirit world. When we go through adolescence, the child in us dies in order to give way to the adult. Death is nothing but transformation, the transition from one state to another. Death is inherent to life.

Death is our ally, always stalking us, reminding us of how much more we have to do before the time comes to leave this precious life.