Qualities of Life and Death

A dear friend passed away last week, someone I had known since elementary school. It hit me pretty hard. We were close in a weird way – we hadn’t seen each other in decades, but he found me on social media a few years back and we became good friends again. He reminded me that he always sat with me on the  bus because I kept the bullies away. I guess I did. When he moved back to our hometown, just a few miles from  where I live now, we didn’t manage to get together often, but we talked a lot, and we messaged a lot. And it was good.

But he lived extra hard and his death was tragic, and yet not entirely unexpected. At least he was able to understand what was going on and make the choice to stop all interventions and go directly to hospice.

I went to see him, and took a guitar. He was unresponsive at that point, though there were times when he grunted or made an exclamatory sound, at wildly appropriate moments, so clearly he was still very aware of what was going on around him. I visited with his mom for a while, punctuated by his growling objections at some things he might have thought too personal. His breathing was labored, and he seemed to be fighting and very tense, even though he was nearly comatose. After a while I got the guitar out and started to play, and his transformation was incredible. His breathing softened, and he relaxed. The angry punctuations stopped. the stress melted away. He became utterly peaceful. I played several songs for him, and then we left him to sleep like a baby. He passed away early the next morning, and I felt so blessed to have been able to spend a little piece of his last moments on Earth with him.

It brought something into focus for me. For many years I have felt that it was going to be a big part of my mission to work with the dying. I didn’t know what that meant when I first realized it, way back in the early 2000s, so I filed it away and stayed alert for clues. It wasn’t until my mother died in Hospice in 2011 that I got the first puzzle peace. I watched what happened when my son played a composition on the piano for her, and nearly every person, including the dying, in the entire facility gathered in the lounge to listen and weep healing tears. I was in awe. I knew music was a power, and I knew it was healing, but I didn’t understand the mechanics just yet.

But soon after, I learned about sound healing and started my adventure in training as a sound healer, and then I understood why, but I was so focused on what I was learning, and on working with clients to improve the quality of life that it hadn’t entered my mind that I could also improve the quality of death.

“Quality of death?” you say, aghast. “What are you talking about? Death is . . . death! There are very few things worse!” 

And that is sadly very true, but it doesn’t have to be that way, and it shouldn’t be that way. Birth and Death are bookends in a life, equally sacred. We Americans don’t like death at all. Death means losing. Death is the end, finis, kaput, all she wrote, donefer, game over, thanks for playing and there are no lovely parting gifts because you couldn’t take them with you anyway.

It has bothered me for a very long time that the Funeral Industry has made death out to be a mess no housewife wants to clean up. We pay people to come and take away our dead so we don’t have to deal with them. Death is icky, unhygienic, gooey, smelly and dangerous.  We are terrified of our own death, and squeamish over anyone else’s. Dead bodies are things you see in crime dramas or horror movies; they aren’t appropriate for the rest of us. Dead bodies get loaded into opaque black body bags as soon as possible and sealed away from  sight. A sheet is pulled  up over their face. They become elephants in every room they are in – until the under-taker (what a fascinating word) does whatever they do to make a person look like they’re just sleeping so we can file by the casket and get whatever closure is left to us.

Pregnant women used to be isolated away from the rest of society, too. Lucille Ball was the first woman to be visibly pregnant on a television show and it was hugely controversial at the time. But eventually, being pregnant became socially acceptable. It didn’t freak all the children out, or cause social unrest or whatever. It just . . . is. This is how humans make more humans, and nearly anyone can do it, whether they want to or not. Not a big deal.

Death is the other end of that rainbow. But as mysterious as birth used to be, death is no less mysterious now. We just have no idea, we don’t know, we can’t know until it’s happening to us, and then we can’t tell anybody else about it. There are a lot of books on the subject, by people who have interviewed Near Death Experience  survivors, and the majority of them seem to agree that it is peaceful and lovely, that it’s like being reborn into a new place that’s filled with love and light and beauty. That doesn’t sound so bad to me. We shed our material bodies like used up cocoons, and reunite with our higher energetic bodies. We see old friends and loved ones. But that’s usually as far as it goes, because if the teller of the story is still around to tell the story, that means they probably got sent back at that point. Or if it’s a ghost or a channeled entity, they can’t really explain what happens next because there aren’t human words for it in any language.

In legends, there were cauldrons in which dead soldiers could be placed, and they would reanimate to fight another day – but they couldn’t speak, so they couldn’t tell anybody what they experienced. They were pissed, though, so it was probably a damn sight better than going into battle endlessly.

It is That Which Cannot Be Told.

Can you tell all of this has been strong in my mind lately? A friend recently told me about training to become a Death Doula. It instantly clicked a tumbler into place for me, like this is a big key, this is part of the Greater It. I’ve been investigating, and I have decided that training to be an End of Life Doula is the next step on my healing journey. My experience playing music for my friend confirms that sound healing could be monumentally helpful and comforting for those transitioning out of the world.

Unfortunately, right now, I can’t volunteer at a hospice due to Covid, so I have to wait to get started. I am reading books, and I’ll be taking online trainings and doing what I can. I’m going to reach out to a few of the local liberal religious institutions and offer sound healing to the dying and their families. Eventually, I will be able to do this work, and I am looking forward with gratitude. Right now, that’s all I can do. But I have all confidence that the Wheel is turning, and things will get better because they have no choice. As far as we have fallen, we have to rise.

How are you doing? No, really, how are you doing? I’m always ready to  listen or  help. Keep in touch.