Bread Crumbs: HELP FROM OVER YONDER

I sat with my sister-in-law, a woman in her forties, as she succumbed to uterine cancer. During this final transition, I fussed about trying to help, washing her face, giving her sips of water or a bit of Popsicle to clear the taste each time her body purged. She suddenly stood up from her La-Z-Boy.  I rose to steady her but she barked at me impatiently, "Ab, you've got to let me go!" 
 
She rearranged herself in her chair and cried out, "HELP me!"  She wasn’t talking to me. Then she said "Okay" and paused with her eyes closed, “okay,” pause, “okay,” four times - each “okay” more calm, more determined than the last. And then she was gone. ‘Though her body still purged, I sensed the moment she left.
When someone in the prime of life suffers illness and dies, we may rage at the unfairness of their fate and our loss. It can be so devastating to us that those well intended words about suffering ended provide no comfort. But sometimes comfort comes from the one we are losing – an unexpected final gift. I knew she received help. Was it from herself - giving herself permission to go towards the inevitable - or from “the other side?” I won’t know until my turn comes to make that journey, but I treasure this comforting bread crumb. She was neither resigned nor afraid as she was dying. Death didn’t take her in her sleep or unawares, she went to it. It was as if someone had been instructing her on how to get free of her body and she was doing what they said, that she purposefully left us and went to them.

O    We only get to see the body’s experience of dying.  It seems there’s another side to the process.


Help from Over Yonder by Abby Freeborn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. For permission to use contact randmxcentric@gmail.com