Life and death are but two faces of one reality
Peeling back the corner on navigating a loved one's end-of-life
Life and death are but two faces of one reality. - Thich Nhat Hanh, The Miracle of Mindfulness.
Grief. Death and Dying. These are topics I am reluctant to explore on so many levels. But this past year, I had to face the inevitable that was happening before my eyes — a parent walking through Alzheimer's. It was painful, scary, and uncharted, and I didn't want to think about it, let alone write about it. In truth, I steadfastly avoided it for several months - a year - before it reached a pitch that insisted on my attention. I could no longer avoid the decline and anticipatory grief that comes with this disease.
No one would choose it or wish it for anyone, yet it offers a time of healing and a time of growth. The slow decline of my stepdad - that has been years in the making - now that I am looking at it clearly - has helped me see him through the long lens of gratitude for all that he gave me over the years, especially knowing that he didn't have to do any of it. He could have phoned it in, and no one would have faulted him for it.
It's challenged my relationship with my mom, forcing old stuff to the surface to be healed while helping put down baggage that hasn't served me for a long time. It’s increased my capacity for empathy. Much like when I had a miscarriage many years ago, I had no idea the things people went through or how many people around me were fighting their own silent battles, alone, privately.
Our isolation makes me question where the hell we have landed - that so many of life's greatest challenges and inevitable events are met mostly with silence and little support - not because people don't care, but because (it seems) of many, many unintended consequences of trying to fit into the cultural and societal systems that have evolved over the past century. It's made me look at healthcare, end-of-life care, dementia care, the grieving process and saying goodbye to our loved ones (both spiritually and logistically), and all the costs associated with these things - and the lack of support on so many levels - and think, WTF?
The birth process is documented from every angle imaginable. Yet, we are strangely and nearly mute on the experiences of death and dying, and everyone's experience shares the same dualities that encompass the birth experience:
Entering and exiting the world are both universal and intensely personal experiences.
None of us will escape the grittiness and messiness that comes with these transitions, no matter how many shields and safeguards we put in place.
Our attempts to do so rob us of the depths and nuances of these rites of passage that make the light that much sweeter.
Before this experience, striving, achieving, personal development, and self-actualization felt like viable paths to a goal or state of being that was always just over the horizon. In the face of what is happening with my stepdad, all of these pursuits now feel a bit hollow.
In other ways, I feel more alive than I ever have, seizing my stepdad's moments of clarity when they arrive - doing all I can to let him know how much I love and appreciate him.
It's opened my eyes to the huge gap in our culture - the one that is relentlessly focused on youth and the pursuit of immortality however you can get it - the one that runs from the darkness except when we bask in it as spectacle - exploring the worst of the worst for entertainment while keeping our own darkness so deeply buried that we forget it is there.
I am no longer into rants, pointing fingers, or shaking my fists at clouds. Instead, I hope to peel back the corner of the end-of-life challenges and make some space to talk about what so many of us are navigating privately. I'm devouring books to try and make sense of what is happening, to find the meaning in it, and how I can transform suffering into opportunities for healing or connection.
The end-of-life process presents many enormous and complicated issues we will be forced to deal with more directly as the Boomers reach end-of-life. In future posts, I will share books and resources that are helping my family and me through this process. What tools and resources do you have, or are you looking for to navigate end-of-life? We don’t have to go it alone.
Thank you for this post! It is a hard thing to face, but death is a reality of life. It is what sets the boundaries of life, along with birth, and gives it definition - a place in time and space. In that we see the energy of Saturn. It is also the trip into the depths, the Underworld, the place where our fears and doubt run rampant, and perhaps, make it more frightening than it really is. In that we see Pluto. I think it is our fear of the loss, the observed suffering, both of those who are passing and those who must carry on once they have passed, that makes death more fearful than it actually is. It is a hard thing to write about the personal. Thank you and kudos for facing your fear and letting it flow over you and through you!
Alix - Such a challenging topic to address. Most of us would rather continue in denial of the inevitable end-of-life details.
My parents are in their 80's and in the past few years we have experienced the loss of my mother's only sibling and four of my father's nine. My father said just the other day "well, I hope we have another decade" and it hit home.
Grateful you are stepping into the conversation.