When someone you love is ill and may be dying, it is the most difficult of times. It is difficult for you because of your impending loss. But it is also difficult for them because of the emotions coming from those they love and their own fears of death.
When someone has accepted or knows of their own impending death, they try and come to terms with it. We must learn to respect their wishes and help them to prepare for death. Being fully present in the moment gives both of you a special gift. Meditation will help you to keep your own emotions in check. When your emotions are greatly reduced, you will be better able to spend more quality time with the person who is dying.
Meditation will not remove all of your emotions, it will calm the most irrational and reactive of emotions. You simply cannot start meditating and a week later find yourself calmer. It takes a matter of time to see these changes. Learn to meditate daily, even if it is for five minutes. After a couple of months of daily meditation you will start to see changes within. After six months of daily meditation, you will not only feel the changes, you will begin to see them.
With continued years of meditating you will be less emotional and reactive. You will have greater clarity of thought and the ability to remain calmer in a crisis. Your personality will be softened. The things that irritated you in the past will be easier to ignore. You will have cultivated serenity. These are the things that will help you and your loved one through the time of their death.
You may ask, how do you know that to be so? If you have read my early posts, you may recall that I said I lost my father. It happened early this year. His death was due to an accidental fall. My father did not die after the fall. The doctors were able to save him, but he would never be the same. He had many infections and would recover, only to get another. I started to realize by paying close attention and asking lots of questions that he would never really recover. I never got concrete answers about his prognosis.
I began to pay closer attention and pick up subtle signs that he was slowly getting worse in different ways. This is what meditation helped me to better see and better accept. It gave us the gift of more time before he would pass on. Time to strengthen our bond and spend quality time together. I have that as a very happy memory.
He spent many months in one hospital or another and a brief time in a nursing home before we came to the decision it was time for hospice. At the last hospital, a strong feeling came over me that this was the last place he should be. He had been diverted from another hospital to which he was often sent. Although I liked the doctors at the other hospital, this place was different.
As I walked through the halls and felt the friendliness of the staff, there was aalso such a sense of calmness there. The feeling that this was the right place came over me so strongly, I had to stop and process it. I meditated on it after I went home that night. After meditation, I knew that this was the place he was meant to pass on, in peace and comfort.
We met with his doctor there who was completely honest with us. I told him we needed to hear the real truth about my father's condition and chances. It was refreshingly unexpected. The doctor told us he did not want to sugarcoat it, he understood how much both my father and my family had been through. He could see we needed the real answers. We had been told for so long he was getting better and would be able to go home. That was never going to happen. I had known this inside me for a couple of months. We arraigned for hospice services and I took a moment to meditate on the decision.
I became tearful at first when I walked into the hospice room, but did some cleansing breaths and calmed and centered myself. I have never been so strong. I heard my teacher say in my mind, "who are you crying for?" I knew I started to cry for me, for my loss. I was with my father as he died. The rest of my family were still on their way. I said a meditative prayer to help him with pass on. I held his hand to comfort him. As much as I wanted him to live so I could still be with him, I also was rational enough to remind myself that it was his choice and he wanted to go on and I must support his wish.
He did not linger very long. He went very quickly. I knew he had passed on as it happened. He let out one long last breath and was gone, onto another realm. The staff at the hospital was shocked that it happened so quickly. He died within a few hours of being taken off his ventilator, not the days or weeks the doctor and the hospice staff had predicted. It was so much better for him, his suffering and all of the illnesses were finally over. He did not die in the chaos, of a noisy ER, as he could have the night he fell. He died with quiet dignity and calmness surrounding him, holding the hand of someone who loved him.
He would want me to know that he is at peace.
Smokey Mountain Memories
A Little Slice of Heaven
