Befriending Death

Hello my loves,

This is the first newsletter I will write that my mom will not read, she died on November 12 of metastatic breast cancer. My mom was my first subscriber. She sometimes printed my newsletters out and put them in a file folder, underlining the sentences she liked. I found the file a few weeks ago emptying her drawers. I need to remove her name from my email list before I send this. There are so many little moves that mark the end of life, so many little moments to feel the burn. 

I had the immense privilege of accompanying my mom to die. Those six weeks were profoundly altering. I am still roiling in the sacred, beautiful and messy journey. So much is moving through me it feels hard to put words around, but here is some of what I’ve been leaning into: 

The end of life does not mean the end of the potential to heal a relationship. 

 I went into my mom’s death with the belief that the healing work I could do with my mother would not end when she died. This released me from a strong need for resolution. I could help her die with my whole heart. I was able to give her comfort, love and appreciation. That part was easy. 

This past year was hard for mom and me. I had tried to open some doors in hopes for a more authentic, honest and healing relationship. She wasn’t able to meet me there. She felt “blocked” she said, and couldn’t reach back towards me. We spent a lot of the year talking but not talking. As I helped her die, I had moments of anger and disappointment. I also had moments of tremendous clarity. I could feel myself untangling from some of my ancestral legacies - burdens I didn’t even realize I was carrying. I’ve felt lighter, freer. I can feel my feet on new ground. 

I know my work with my mom isn’t done but I don’t need her earthly body for us to heal together. I have a feeling her highest self will show up for conversations with me she wasn’t able to have while she was alive. It was comforting knowing this as she died. It is comforting now. 

Our work in life is to befriend our death.

 One night in the hospital I woke up from a beautiful dream. I was on the banks of the Ganges river. Small bright fires burned, scattered along the riverbank above the inky black water. People sat in clusters around the fires. One by one, a figure would get up from the fire and walk into the blackness beyond the edge of the firelight. I felt my mom’s frail body beside me, laboring to breathe and saw it all so clearly: my mom is just walking away from her fire. 

There is nothing like rubbing right up against dying to realize how death phobic this culture is. My cultural roots are in western Christianity that taught us death is a punishment for leaving the garden. We’re supposed to avoid death at all costs, and then when it happens it is made out to be terrible. I don’t think it has to be this way. 

Stephen Jenkinson is a rabble rousing death worker, who asks us to hold death close. Could I hold it tender and warm like a baby’s head nestled in the curve of my neck? We’re all put here on this earth to die. How might I live differently with this exquisite knowledge warm against my skin?  And I ask these questions with the full awareness that thinking about death and dying are two different things. I have been thinking a lot about death in these last months and I have no idea what it is to die.

Ritual matters.

My sister and I were winging it. Without any death traditions that made sense, we made things up.  In the week after she died, we opened Mom’s apartment each afternoon. Her friends streamed in and we feasted on her stories. We gave away her books, paintings and jewelry. We held a memorial outside in freezing temperatures. We put flower petals and ashes in the river that was her home. It was helpful to have talked this through before the acuteness of her actual death short circuited our decision making ability. We moved through the plans we made without ground under our feet. 

Many cultures believe that the ancestors are with us. I come from a culture that probably once had a rich relationship with our dead. We don’t now. It doesn’t mean we can’t start. I like to imagine that having a stronger relationship with my ancestors would take some of the pressure off. I wouldn’t have to get it all right in this lifetime. If I had ancestors around it might not feel like it was all up to me, and frankly, I could use the help.  For more on this, read adrienne maree brown’s  iluminating piece on being accountable to our ancestors. Honoring ancestors is not in my bones yet, I haven’t started setting an extra place at the table. I don’t know what my rituals will be, but my mom dying is helping me start to find out. 

Dying is messy and complicated.

I’ve caught myself saying “she died peacefully.” That’s not entirely true. When the word peaceful slips out, it’s pointing to something deeper - a reassurance that we both subconsciously want. What I witnessed is that dying is messy, raw, uncomfortable, also beautiful. I kept catching myself holding onto an idea of how it would all go. Over and over I had to let that go of any idea of a timeline, what would happen, how mom would respond, how I would. People talked about a “good” death. It reminded me of how I wanted a blissful home water birth that didn’t happen. Birthing my kid was beautiful and angsty and ended in a c-section. My mom’s death was beautiful and angsty and uncomfortable. In the end, she opted for medically induced palliative sedation. She knew when she was ready, it allowed her to consciously say goodbye, and it gave her a sense of control. But there wasn’t really any control, and it wasn’t entirely peaceful. 

I’m on the other side of my mom dying, and I am only beginning to walk in the world without her. Things are shifting inside me in big ways, some things are blowing up (just ask my wife!) New channels are opening. I’m trying to move slowly, even as we pack up to go on sabbatical. I’m reconnecting with my life knowing that I don’t get to go “back” to what was. 

 Tomorrow I get in the car for a long road trip. Just in this moment I am realizing I won’t be calling her as I usually do - our conversations interrupted by the 20 minute windows of service driving across Wyoming. I’d always call back an hour later when I had service again. She’d always pick up. 

Thank you for reading this far with me if you are still here - that was a long one. I appreciate your attention. Thank you for being on this journey with me, I have felt so much support - tangible and practical, and also this unseen but felt sense that people are with me. 

This feels like a small beginning in a large conversation. Pull up a chair, come sit at the table with me. Hit reply if you are inspired. I want to know the texture of your grief. How are you befriending your death, the death of your loved ones? I’d love your company. There is so much more to say. 

With all my love in living and dying,

Liz

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A few things that supported me on this death journey: 

Hospice nurses. All of you! Your work is sacred. 

The Ram Dass documentary, Going Home,  on netflix. It’s 30 minutes. I wept the whole time. “Make friends with change” he says, “death is change.” And then,  “we’re all just walking each other home.” 

Daniel Foor’s work on Ancestral Lineage Healing. 

Stephen Jenkinson and his work in the death trade. Specifically this little book. 

And The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully by Frank Ostaseski.