The disciples leaned forward eagerly so as not to miss a word. 'Please tell us!'
'My, but this cake is delicious!' And with that he slipped away.
From 'The Wheel of Life and Death' by Philip Kapleau.
In the Buddhist tradition there is something natural and healthy about making use of your death. The death of the Buddha himself is neither a monument nor an icon, but a practical demonstration. Thus he used his death to deliver a sermon of practical advice to his disciples. According to tradition he predicted his own passing: 'Reckoned from today, I will sustain my life for only three more months.' When the time came he gave a practical model of how to meet death, couched in a few sentences that are worth savouring.
'My time has come, my work is done. Everything eventually comes to an end, even if it should last for an aeon. The time of parting is bound to come one day. I have done what I could for myself and others, and to remain longer would be without purpose. I have trained all whom I could train.' The final send-off begins: 'My teachings shall last for many generations, so do not be disturbed. Recognise that all that lives is subject to the laws of impermanence, and strive for eternal wisdom.' And ends: 'When the light of knowledge dispels ignorance, when the world is seen as without substance, the end of life is seen as peace and as a cure to disease. Everything that exists is bound to perish. Be therefore mindful of your salvation. The time of my passing has come.' Having said these words the master 'entered into a profound meditation and passed away'.
From 'Death and Dying, The Tibetan Tradition' by Glenn H. Mullin.
The Tibetan yogi Milarepa (eleventh century), by knowingly accepting poisoned food, consciously used his death in such a way as to make his murderer repent, and convert to righteous ways!
Ancient models of the 'brave and conscious death' - death faced with full consciousness, not denied - provide a lively contrast to the modern custom of avoiding or passing over the moment of death or, worse still, draping it in artificial gloom. In the following examples death is approached with vigorous human emotions of curiosity, technical interest and celebration. The Arab Amr Ibn Al-As responded on his deathbed with a precise image of what dying felt like: 'breathing through the eye of a needle'. The methods of Himalayan yogis present themselves as an exact science of dying, clearly attainable only after long and conscious study of techniques. As a model of natural death none could be richer and more rewarding of study than the Native American way, as told by Sun Bear, wwho himself died in 1992. Within this spacious tradition there is room for each person to make his death according to his natural bent, whether in solitary praise and ritual, in celebration with friends or even in the heat of action.
Amr Ibn Al-As, the Arab conqueror of Egypt, died in 664; quoted in 'The Oxford Book of Death' edited by D. J. Enright.
One which is traditional to certain Himalayan yogis is to seat yourself in meditation, enter the state of consciousness called samadhi, and then allow the body to freeze in the cold mountain air. Another technique - very rare - involves meditating on the solar plexus in a certain way that generates great internal heat, inducing spontaneous combustion of the body.
From 'A Practical Guide to Death and Dying' by John White.
There is a story of one old-timer who felt his time had come. He invited all of his friends to a gathering where they sang songs and made a feast. He had a big give-away, giving gifts to all his friends, telling them how happy he had been with their friendship. They, in turn, all spoke their good thoughts of him. Then, while they were singing songs, he closed his eyes and died. Many Indian people have been known to predict the exact date and time they would die.
Warrior societies used to let the old men go into battle one last time. When they went the young men would stand aside and say, 'Let the old man count one last coup.'
Another Indian custom was to give away or make arrangements to give away everything a person had before he died. That way there was nothing for anyone to fight over after the person was gone.
Like all other things in life, death is not permanent. It is but a change from one world, from one state of being into another. For those of us who learn to love life, with all of its changes, death should not be a fearful event. It should be a time of celebrating the continual evolution of the soul. When it is your time to pass, it should be with your mind wide open and your prayer in your heart. When one dear to you dies, besides sadness at your loss you should feel happiness that now the soul is free to soar to Kitche Manitou, the Great Spirit, our common Creator. Where there is love, there is no room for fear.
From Many Smokes magazine (now entitled Wild Fire), Bear Tribe Medicine Society, PO Box 9167, Spokane, WA 99209-9167, USA.
The deaths of Jesus and Socrates provide the models for the blend of Christian and classical attitudes to facing death that has moulded Western tradition. Given that modern Western culture seems to have lost the feel for natural death we should look closely at our own tradition to see what happened to the brave and conscious death along the way. Is there some inherent feature in the Western way of dying that has led to modern attitudes of denial? Judging by the two examples that follow, the answer would be a resounding No.
St Francis met his end by singing a welcome to death. According to another version of the story his Christian cheerfulness set up such a racket in the Bishop's palace that the singing saint was not allowed to die in the main building. Plato's account of the death of Socrates shows the philosopher dying as he lived, choosing to die rather than compromise his principles at the command of the state, and surrounded by his tearful but admiring friends.
And Death is our sister, we praise Thee for Death,
Who releases the soul to the light of Thy gaze;
And dying we cry with the last of our breath
But St. Francis' voice failed at that moment. He died singing the praise of death.
Quoted in 'Philosophy of Death and Dying' by M. V. Kamath.
'However you please,' replied Socrates, 'that is, if you can catch me and I don't slip away from you.'
The slave went out and stayed away a long time and then returned with the man who was to administer the poison; he brought it in a cup ready for use. When Socrates saw him he said 'Well, my good man, you know about these things; what must I do?'
'Nothing,' he replied, 'except drink it and then walk about until your legs feel heavy, and then lie down. Then the poison will act of its own accord.'
'What do you say about pouring a libation from this drink to a god? Is it permitted, or not?'
'We prepare only as much as we think is enough, Socrates,' he replied.
'I understand,' said Socrates. 'But I may and must pray to the gods that my departure from this world may be fortunate. So I offer this as my prayer and may it be granted.' With these words, with no sign of disgust and quite calmly, he drank the cup to the last drop in one breath.
Socrates walked about, and when his legs were heavy, he lay down on his back - that was what the man advised. The man who had administered the poison laid his hand upon Socrates, and after a little while examined his legs and feet; then pinched his foot hard and asked if he felt it. Socrates said No. Then he pinched his legs; and moving upwards in this way he showed us that he was getting cold and rigid. The man felt him again and said that when it reached the heart, Socrates would be gone.
The chill had now reached his belly when Socrates uncovered his face - which he had covered up - and said (these were his last words): 'Crito, we owe a cock to Aesculapius. Don't neglect this.'
From Plato's 'Phaedo', translated by Marcelle Papworth.
Quoted in 'Philosophy of Death and Dying' by M. V. Kamath.
This is natural death, Western-style. Washington died as he lived, polite and civil to the end. Another of the founding fathers of the United States, President Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, was determined to die on the fourth of July.
He was getting restless. He sat up in bed, leaned forward as if in a gesture of writing. He was delirious. 'The Committee of Safety must be warned,' he mumbled. In the corner, a grandfather clock ticked the minutes away. At 11pm Jefferson looked at Trist, asked, his voice a bare whisper: 'This is the 4th?' Trist pretended he had not heard. Afraid Jefferson was dying and even more afraid to tell a dying man an untruth, Trist was miserable. Jefferson repeated the question. Mutely, Trist nodded assent. 'Ah!' he heard Jefferson sigh, as if satisfied with the knowledge that he had seen the fiftieth anniversary of his beloved republic arrive. Now others joined Trist and Randolph at the great leader's bedside. Jefferson fell into a disturbed sleep. The midnight hour struck. Conscious or not, Jefferson had realised his desire. At 4 am on the morning of July 4th, Jefferson stirred and called for Burwell, one of the slaves he had freed in his last will and testament. He did not speak again. On the noon of July 4th, fifty minutes past meridian, Jefferson ceased to breathe.
Quoted in 'Philosophy of Death and Dying' by M. V. Kamath.
In the eighteenth century early Christian and classical influences are still discernible in the way of dying. The poet William Blake sang halleluiahs, in the style of St. Francis, as he went to meet his Maker. This was typical of Blake who was once found by a friend reading 'Paradise Lost' to his wife in the conservatory of their home. Both were nude, befitting the setting of Milton's poem in the Garden of Eden.
The philosopher David Hume took leave of life in a calm, stoical manner reminiscent of Socrates:
From 'The Fireside Book of Death' by Robert Wilkins.
Yet death was not always as seamless as it appeared in the outwardly confident, mannered society of that time. Christian faith was alive, but assailed by doubts and terrors. James Boswell, the great biographer was driven to his wits' end, and, by his own account, to drink and whoring, by his father's Christian cheerfulness. The father, an Edinburgh judge and classical scholar, was everything that a pillar of his time ought to be but Jamie was a bit ahead of his time with twentieth-century existential hang-ups. Had he been around in the nineteen-sixties he would certainly have worn beads and experimented with pot. Nevertheless Boswell faithfully recorded the death of his hero and the subject of his biography, Dr Samuel Johnson, in the spirit of the times:
As he opened a note which his servant brought to him, he said, 'An odd thought strikes me: we shall receive no letters in the grave.'
He requested three things of Sir Joshua Reynolds: to forgive him thirty pounds which he had borrowed of him; to read the Bible; and never to use his pencil on a Sunday. Sir Joshua readily acquiesced.
Johnson, with that native fortitude, which, amidst all his bodily distress and mental sufferings, never forsook him, asked Dr Brocklesby, as a man in whom he had confidence, to tell him plainly whether he could recover. 'Give me' (said he) 'a direct answer.' The Doctor having first asked him if he could bear the whole truth, which way so ever it might lead, and being answered that he could, declared that, in his opinion, he could not recover without a miracle. 'Then' (said Johnson) 'I will take no more physick, not even my opiates: for I have prayed that I may render up my soul to God unclouded.'
From 'Life of Johnson' by James Boswell.
John Keats, the romantic poet, when he discovers blood on his sheet at the young age of twenty-five, looked at it steadfastly:
He was persuaded to travel to Italy:
In Rome, the friends took rooms at the bottom of the famous Spanish Steps in the Piazza di Spagna. Keats rested but he had now no illusion of what was coming. To Brown he wrote: 'I have an habitual feeling of my real life having past and that I am leading a posthumous existence.'
All of December and the January and February following, Severn watched Keats with fraternal care and affection. Then the end came. On Friday, February 23rd, 1821, around four o'clock in the afternoon, Severn heard himself called. Keats was calling for him. 'Severn, Severn, lift me up, for I am dying. I shall die easy; don't be frightened. Thank God it has come!'
Severn rushed to his friend's bedside, took the young poet in his strong arms and waited. Severn was still holding Keats tightly when the poet died. In his 'Ode to a Nightingale' he had written:
Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful death,
Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain.
Quoted in 'Philosophy of Death and Dying' by M. V. Kamath.
A little nearer to our day Henry David Thoreau, the philosopher of the woods and natural living, died as he lived, at peace with the world:
As his mother, sister and aunt watched him, his breathing grew fainter and fainter and without the slightest struggle, as if he was going gently into the good night, he died at nine o'clock. A man who was ever at peace with himself, died peacefully.
Quoted in 'Philosophy of Death and Dying' by M. V. Kamath.
And yet around this time there was a growing sense that the Western tradition had begun to forget the purpose of ritual in meeting death, and to fail to recognise it in other cultures. Walt Whitman introduced the spirit of modernity to American poetry and art but was at the same time one of the first to recognise the importance of Eastern philosophies. Whitman used the ancient wisdom of the Upanishads in his verse in a way that later inspired the Beat movement of the nineteen-fifties which led to the hippy flowering of the Sixties. Whitman's poem describes the death of Osceola, an American Indian, at the time of the civil war. Osceola, imprisoned in an alien culture, reached into his own tradition in order to die bravely and consciously. The real-life background to the poem is equally important. It is prophetic of a modern phenomenon, namely the ancient cultures that have died 'of a broken heart' whilst Western technological society looks on, unaware of its own impoverishment and, in particular, of the importance of ceremony in natural death.
When his hour for death had come,
He slowly rais'd himself from the bed on the floor,
Drew on his war-dress, shirt, leggings, and girdled the belt around his waist,
Call'd for vermillion paint (his looking-glass was held before him),
Painted half his face and neck, his wrists, and back-hands,
Put the scalp-knife carefully in his belt - then lying down, resting a moment,
Rose again, half sitting, smiled, gave in silence his extended hand to each and all,
Sank faintly low to the floor (tightly grasping the tomahawk handle),
Fix'd his look on wife and children - the last.
From 'Leaves of Grass' by Walt Whitman.
There comes a point where the Western tradition of seamless death does not work any more. The lack of distinction between life and death becomes a negative, a denial of death. Coming right up to our own time, the following description of a hospital death shows a peculiar alienation. The seamless death has come to mean a pretence that death does not exist. Death has been stripped bare of all its ceremony, its connection with home and loved ones, its ritual and celebration - in a word, its relationship to life. It has lost its natural form. 'Bravery' in this example means not consciousness but pretending you're not dying at all! This is Jill, a nurse by profession, describing Tony, her husband, dying in a surgical ward. She sums it up in one devastating image: 'like dying on a building site'. A building site! Luckily in this case the form of natural death was restored when Tony was transferred first to a hospice and then, with their help, back home. The couple ended up fighting bravely for the dignity of the conscious death.
Jill felt that hospital staff must try and understand this and modify their 'jollying up' attitude to dying patients. She felt that what would have helped, was for someone to sit down with him and listen to and care about what he was feeling. 'The obvious policy there was that the terminally ill patient is to be avoided at all costs.'
Jill said, 'The pits was his dying on this busy surgical ward, it was like dying on a building site and I used all my back-door contacts to get him out. God help the poor buggers who didn't have those contacts.'
Jill eventually had Tony transferred to a hospice where the tension visibly seeped out of him. 'When he wanted to be alone he was alone, when he wanted to chat, about dying, or anything else, he could.' In fact it gave them the breathing space to decide where he wanted to die and for the last two weeks he went home, with the back-up of the domiciliary hospice service.
Had Jill's concept of herself as a nurse changed since this tragic experience? 'I'll never pass by a bed again without chatting to a dying patient,' she said.
From the Guardian (Oct. 1st 1986).
No two people could be more diverse in their lifestyles than the natural-living homesteader Scott Nearing and the sophisticated intellectual Aldous Huxley. Their chosen paths of dying reflect these differences. Yet it is encouraging to note the similarities of choice. Both chose to recognise, in a highly conscious way, the transition between life and death. Both filled this time with a courage and a dignity that were very much alive. And, at the end, both men were in close harmony with themselves and their partners.
A published account of Aldous Huxley's first wife's death describes how Maria Huxley came home from hospital with a rapidly deteriorating cancer of the liver. Huxley helped to make her comfortable through hypnosis:
For the last hour I sat or stood with my left hand on her head and the right on the solar plexus. Between two right-handed persons this contact seemed to create a kind of vital circuit. For a restless child, for a sick or tired adult, there seems to be something soothing and refreshing about being in such a circuit. And so it proved even in this extremity. The breathing became quieter and I had the impression that there was some kind of release. I went on with my suggestions and reminders, reducing them to their simplest form and repeating them close to the ear. 'Let go, let go. Forget the body, leave it lying here; it is of no importance now. Go forward into the light.' When the breathing ceased, at about six, it was without any struggle.
From 'This Timeless Moment' by Laura Archera Huxley.
Aldous Huxley himself 'died as he lived, doing his best to develop fully in himself one of the essentials he recommended to others - awareness,' writes his second wife Laura Archera Huxley:
The Tibetan Book of the Dead gives the greatest importance to the state of consciousness at the time of death. The guide always addresses the dying person with the salute 'O Nobly Born!' and urges: 'Let not thy mind be distracted.' The guide keeps reminding the dying person not to become entangled in visions, heavenly or hellish, which are not real, but which are only the illusionary projections of his thoughts and emotions, fears and desires. The dying are exhorted 'to go on practising the art of living even while they are dying. Knowing who in fact one is, being conscious of the universal and impersonal life that lives itself through each of us. That's the art of living, and that's what one can help the dying to go on practising. To the very end.'
Laura Huxley gave Aldous on his deathbed, at his request, two injections of 100mg of LSD:
A decision had been made. Suddenly he had accepted the fact of death; now, he had taken this moksha-medicine in which he believed. Once again he was doing what he had written in 'Island', and I had the feeling that he was interested and relieved and quiet.
I began to talk to him, saying, 'Light and free you let go, darling; forward and up. You are going forward and up; you are going toward the light. Willingly and consciously you are going, willingly and consciously, and you are doing this beautifully; you are doing this so beautifully - you are going toward the light - you are going toward the light - you are going toward a greater love - you are going forward and up. It is so easy - it is so beautiful.' Once I asked him, 'Do you hear me?' He squeezed my hand; he was hearing me.
The breathing became slower and slower, and there was absolutely not the slightest indication of contraction, of struggle. The ceasing of life was not a drama at all, but like a piece of music just finishing so gently in a sempre più piano, dolcemente ... and at five-twenty the breathing stoppped
If the way Aldous died were known, it might awaken people to the awareness that not only this, but many other facts described in 'Island' are possible here and now. Aldous asking for the moksha-medicine while dying is not only a confirmation of his open-mindness and courage, but as such a last gesture of continuing importance. Is his way of dying to remain for his friends, and only for us, a relief and consulation, or should others also benefit from it? Aren't we all nobly born and entitled to noble dying?
Adapted from 'This Timeless Moment' by Laura Archera Huxley.
'We rarely if ever,' writes Scott Nearing' wife, 'used doctors, pills or hospitals. Yet Scott lived to a hale and hearty 100 and died when he decided to - by fasting for a month and a half at the very end.'
The Nearings are dissimilar to the Huxleys, but in their togetherness they could be the same couple. Scott's dying, as Helen describes it, was like nature itself:
A month or two before he died he was sitting at table with us at a meal. Watching us eat he said, 'I think I won't eat anymore.' 'Alright,' said I. 'I understand. I think I would do that too. Animals know when to stop. They go off in a corner and leave off food.'
So I put Scott on juices: carrot juice, apple juice, banana juice, pineapple, grape - any kind. I kept him full of liquids as often as he was thirsty. He got weaker, of course, and he was as gaunt and thin as Gandhi. Came a day he said, 'I think I'll go on water. Nothing more.' From then on, for about ten days, he only had water. He was bed-ridden and had little strength but spoke with me daily. In the morning of August 24th, 1983, two weeks before his hundredth birthday, when it seems he was slipping away, I sat beside him on his bed.
We were quiet together; no interruptions, no doctors or hospitals. I said, 'It's alright, Scott. Go right along. You've lived a good life and are finished with things here. Go on and up - up into the light. We love you and let you go. It's alright.'
In a soft voice, with no quiver or pain or disturbance he said 'All...right,' and breathed slower and slower and slower till there was no movement anymore and he was gone out of his body as easily as a leaf drops from the tree in autumn, slowly twisting and falling to the ground.
Excerpted from In Context magazine No. 26 (subs. $31, airmail $42, from PO Box 11470, Bainbridge Island, WA98110, USA, tel 0101 206 842 0216).
The familiar modern phrase 'terminal illness' is enough to strike terror into the heart. It suggests an illness for which there is no cure, a failure of modern science. There is no hint of death as a natural event and perhaps that is what is so terrifying, as if death somehow does not fit into the modern world. A group of terminally ill people and their relatives gather together for a popular television programme and are regarded as brave for coming forward and exposing their connection with death. And so they are. Extraordinarily brave. Under the glare of the studio lights they are forced to be bright, cheerful, to perform for the cameras in the same way as a dying patient has to perform for the clinical ambience of the modern hospital with all its sophisticated monitoring and life-saving equipment; to apologise to all that medical technology for being a failure, for dying. Nevertheless they do not lose their dignity. They are facing death with their eyes open. They talk calmly of practical matters, of freeing themselves from the burdens of daily life like credit cards and uncongenial jobs, of preparing their families for the inevitable event. They discuss the false friends who desert them, as if dying were contagious, and the true friends who remain, the families who give support, the husbands, daughters and mothers.
Nobody mentions science or technology, and it is curious how irrelevant these become when a person is finally in charge of his or her own death. Albert Einstein, the father of modern physics, was impatient of medical technology at the point of death.
From 'Philosophy of Death and Dying' by M.V. Kamath.
In recognising death instead of brushing it aside the people in the television studio as well as the great discoverer of relativity are bravely and consciously taking a stand against the trend of our culture. By contrast the great cultures of the East have continued their recognition of death into modern times. When Ramakrishna Paramahansa became 'terminally ill' with cancer, his body wasted away as his spirit prepared for death. At the end he fell into samadhi as did, sixteen years later, his disciple Swami Vivekananda who founded the Ramakrishna Mission and brought the meaning of Hinduism to the West. The death meditation of the Tibetan Buddhists is illustrated in the accounts of an old man dying as the Dalai Lama gave a talk, and in the death of the former abbot of the Dalai Lama's monastery in Dharamsala.
Soon the chapel bell rang the seven o'clock call for evening worship. Quietly, with a word that none should disturb him, he went to his own room for an hour's meditation. Then he called one of his disciples in and asked him to open all the windows and fan his head. Without a word, he lay down and a silence enveloped the room. The disciple continued to fan the Swami. Minutes passed and not a word was uttered. It was presumed that Vivekananda was either sleeping or gone into deep meditation and in any event it was not for the disciple to disturb him either by word or deed.
At the end of an hour, says Swami Nikhilananda in the Swami's official biography, Vivekananda's hands trembled a little and he seemed to take a deep breath. There followed a shattering silence. The Swami again took a similar deep breath. 'His eyes became fixed in the center of his eyebrows, his face assumed a divine expression and eternal silence fell.'
From 'Philosophy of Death and Dying' by M.V. Kamath.
Swami Vivekananda did not die, but gave up his body voluntarily in an act of yoga called mahasamadhi, as did his master, Sri Ramakrishna, writes Charles Franc, July 1998. It was the latter, not Vivekananda - he suffered from dropsy and other nagging ailments - who had throat cancer. 'Swami Vivekananda passed away at the age of thirty-nine years, five months, and twenty-four days, thus fulfilling his own prophecy: "I shall not live to be forty years old"' (Nikhilananda, p. 178)
From 'Death and Dying' by Glenn H. Mullin.
One day out of the blue he told me, 'For several years I have been promising to give a formal instruction to you. I think the time has now come. If you wish, you can invite some of your friends to attend as well.' Because the teaching was to be given in a group I arranged for a translator, and the day of the event drew near.
The teaching then began; but after about fifteen minutes I noticed that although he looked perfect when he himself would speak, even laughing and telling jokes, when he would stop and let the translator talk his face would change colour and he would curl up slightly and close his eyes to concentrate on his mantras, turning his rosary rather more quickly than usual. After several minutes had passed I leaned over and asked him if anything was wrong. 'Well,' he replied calmly, 'I'm having a heart attack.' At the moment the translator finished speaking and Rinpoche straightened himself again and went on with the discourse as though nothing were wrong. When he had paused again to let the translator speak I leaned over and asked him, 'Goodness, shouldn't we stop the teaching immediately?' He gave me a long, penetrating look.
'As you wish,' he replied, 'we can either go on now or finish another time.' I quickly called a halt to things and got everyone out of the room. Rinpoche moved over to his bed and sat in meditation, and several of his monks rushed in and began chanting to him in low, deep tones. He sat in meditation that evening without moving. The next day I visited his house. He was not well enough to receive me, but sent me a message. 'Rinpoche asks that you remember his teaching,' his attendant informed me. That night the lama sat in meditation and ceased breathing. His heart stopped and bodily functions failed, although he did not manifest the full signs of death. This is the practice of tuk-dam, when a yogi retreats to the heart in death meditation. He sat like this for three days without manifesting the signs of death. Then his head fell to one side and the process was complete. Such is the death of an accomplished yogi.
From 'Death and Dying' by Glenn H. Mullin.
In her book 'Deathing' Anya Foos-Graber makes the link between Eastern and Western ways of dying. 'The introduction of a support person, therefore, is the modern replacement of the supportive lama in Tibetan spiritual intervention in the dying process, who becomes a therapeutic presence, a monitor, and a coach to keep the dying "on course" during the deathing experience.' She goes on to describe the teaching she receives from a Westerner, Paul Twitchell, in the Eastern art of consciousness withdrawal, during the process of his dying.
As Paul died, he laboured with his breath in long-held exhalations, as I recall having done during childbirth's labour. While I had concentrated on my breathing to help the birth, Paul breathed carefully to ease himself out of life. Slowly he performed what I now call consciousness withdrawal; as he did so, the personal connection I had always felt with him winked out. Gone - it was like the ceasing of a song - and its absence made clear what his presence had meant. But in its place was a radiant harmony that permeated the room in a much vaster presence which has never left me.
From 'Deathing' by Anya Foos-Graber.
The connection between dying and birth is close to the hopes of the Natural Death Centre for a holistic midwifery service for the dying.
'People have choice over giving birth, why not mode of death?' asks a letter writer. The Natural Death Centre welcomes accounts of dying experiences under modern conditions. This particular letter contrasts 'two deaths, one where Graham virtually organised his own and the other where Joyce was a victim of the system and not in control'. Graham died at home, surrounded by support. Joyce died in hospital. In contrast, a good hospital death is described by a letter writer who had discussed in advance with her husband how to approach the experience, and who was allowed by the hospital to remain fully involved.
I felt very strained as I had the feeling his wife knew his prognosis but he hadn't a clue. The following week he was to get results of a liver biopsy. The day before these results his GP, a practising Christian, came to warn him that it would be grim news. A week later I steeled myself to visit. His wife said he had taken to his bed too weak to get up. His sister, an SRN, had come home from her missionary job in China. His other sister, another SRN, had also come to stay to nurse him. Graham was aware he hadn't long to live and arrangements had been made years ago that they would care for each other when the time came for any one of them to die. He told his wife he would like to see me two days later. I visited and was concerned to find the spiritual side of him in great distress. He talked to me about his funeral. I mentioned this to his wife who looked shocked, and I asked her to 'grab a space' to talk with him.
That weekend Graham's son, who is a GP, stayed, also his daughter, a nurse. His own GP prescribed painkillers, and half the dose prescribed was given at Graham's request, so as not to be 'knocked out'. The most loyal church members came to his house and had a service on the Sunday evening, and a visiting minister gave communion. I understand this, plus a vicar colleague who counselled him, gave him spiritual peace and strength. His grandchildren visited and cuddled him, bringing him garden flowers. His house meanwhile was filled with flowers and cards. I mentioned to Iris about keeping visitors to family now so he could have dignity. The nurse began to call daily the last four days of his life. Apparently Graham was debating water rates about two hours before he died.
As far as Graham was concerned he probably couldn't have had all his visitors and 'cuddles' in hospital. I'm sure he couldn't have had a service in his room in hospital (perhaps he could in some). I doubt he could have had the privacy to arrange his affairs with his sons.
His family must feel fulfilled in that they gave him the best, with people he loved.
From a letter to The Natural Death Centre.
From the same letter as above.
From a letter to The Natural Death Centre.
Natural death, where it is allowed to happen, takes many forms depending on the individual and the specific circumstances. The published account of Sophie's death, given below, seems to radiate with the indomitable spirit of life emerging from a grotesquely wasted body. Mrs Thayler's death in hospital is described by a 'support person', a true midwife of death who came to realise that the pain of dying was like the pain of labour, giving birth to the soul. Another support person, a Christian priest, describes the ritual of dying among the Alaskan Indians where the active role of the dying person is emphasised. Old Sarah organised her own death, assigning a supportive role to the priest who realised about these people that 'few of them required the services of a doctor to tell them they were terminal'.
Her cancer was now very advanced and she was close to death, a skeleton weighing only four stone. Her hair was matted, her eyes were gummed up, whiskers had sprouted all around her face and a gigantic tumour was growing on her neck, but she was still alert, witty and articulate. Her skin was too tender to be touched anywhere so massage was not appropriate, but I sat with her for hours on end, talking or being silent - whatever she wanted - and I found her a great inspiration. I learned a lot from her remarkable acceptance of death, an attitude I'd always felt and hoped was possible.
'This is the natural outcome of my life and I'm genuinely interested in the process of dying. I only hope it won't be boring after all this. I'm excited by what lies ahead. My bags are packed and I'm ready to go.' She loved to sleep now, she said - everything else required too much energy - and described a special dreaming state she kept slipping into, unlike any she'd ever known, wherein she was already half out of her body. It was a state of great lightness and peace, and she looked forward to it. 'It's like a rehearsal and not at all frightening. I can smell hay and roses and I just hope the real thing will feel like this.'
I toasted her with a glass of champagne in the beautiful French summer countryside and she was there in the warm smell of hay and roses. I thought about her all day, wondering if she could feel the connection as strongly as I did. The next morning I rang the hospice to speak to her and was told she had died the evening before, so I'll never know, but in my heart I shared that day with her.
From 'Acquainted with the Night' by Allegra Taylor.
It wasn't until the next day that understanding came. I came to my friend to talk about this struggle I still felt in my body and lay down with my head in his lap. I couldn't tell the difference between Mrs Thayler and me. Her body, my body, the same. My body began to grow like hers and as I let her, my, our, groaning come, finally it came clear. Exactly the same as when I see a bird singing in the trees. Perfect praise of God. The bird's life, the bird's song, a statement of the perfection of God. And Mrs Thayler's life, her death agony, a song in praise of God. A perfect song, a perfect statement of God. The groans were labour pains, only she was giving birth to her soul out of her mouth, letting it fly free from her body; and the death agony - labour pains. I couldn't see how it was because I wanted her to be out of what appeared to be struggle.
From 'Who Dies?' by Stephen Levine.
During the morning of the next day she prayed for all the members of her family. At noon we had a great celebration of the Eucharist in her cabin complete with all the hymns and prayers. Old Sarah loved every minute of it, joined in the prayers and the singing and was quite bright throughout the service. Then we all left and at six in the evening she died.
Old Sarah didn't need much bolstering of her will.
She was on familiar ground with familiar people and was carrying out a long tradition. But in our communities today many people die in some kind of isolation; a strange hospital room, the regimen of hospital life, controlled visits, medication (often mind-dulling) and possibly a battery of life-support systems. How can an individual exert much will, continue growing, reaching out, and giving in that kind of setting? That defines the task of those who love him: to break through the isolation and offer human warmth, the liveliness of one personality in contact with another and the opportunity for the dying to be heard and understood and to give his gifts of love.
From 'Dying Among Alaskan Indians' by Murray Trelease in 'Death, the Final Stage of Growth', edited by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross.
A gift for the dying is the theme of what is perhaps the most moving of all the stories collected in this Natural Death Handbook. It concerns the death of a fifteen-year-old girl, Lee.
'We could have lied, telling her of course she wasn't going to die, but we didn't have the heart. Somehow her courage was worth more than our pretence. We just cuddled her and cried together. Then she said, "I always dreamed of falling in love, getting married, having kids ... but above all I would have liked to work in a big marine park with dolphins. I've loved them and wanted to know more about them since I was little. I still dream of swimming with them free and happy in the open sea." She'd never asked for anything, but now she said with all the strength she could muster, "Daddy, I want to swim in the open sea among the dolphins just once. Maybe then I wouldn't be so scared of dying."
'My wife and I talked it over and decided to do everything we could. We had heard of a research centre in the Florida Keys and we phoned them. "Come at once," they said. But that was easier said than done. Lee's illness had used up all our savings and we had no idea how we would be able to afford air tickets to Florida. Then our six year old, Emily, mentioned that she'd seen something on television about a foundation that grants the wishes of very sick children. So I phoned the number and three days later we were all on our way.
'When we arrived at Grass Key, Lee was pale and terribly thin. The chemotherapy she'd been having had made all her hair fall out and she looked ghastly, but she didn't want to rest for a minute and begged us to take her straight away to the dolphins. It was an unforgettable scene. When she got into the water, Lee was already so weak she hardly had the strength to move. We had all put her in a wet suit so she wouldn't get cold, with a life preserver to keep her afloat.
'I towed her out toward the two dolphins, Nat and Tursi, who were frolicking around about thirty feet away from us. At first they seemed distracted and uninterested but when Lee called them softly by name they responded without hesitation. Nat came over first, raised his head and gave her a kiss on the end of her nose. Then Tursi came over and greeted her with a flurry of little high-pitched squeaks of joy. A second later they picked her up with their mighty fins and carried her out to sea with them.
"It feels like flying!" cried Lee, laughing with delight. I hadn't heard her laugh like that since before she became ill. I could hardly believe it was true, but there she was gripping Nat's fin and challenging the wind and the immensity of the ocean. The dolphins stayed with Lee for more than an hour, always tender, always attentive, never using any unnecessary force, always responsive to her wishes.
'There are no words to describe the effect that swim had on her. When she got out of the water it was as if she had been reborn.
'The next day she was too weak to get out of bed. She didn't even want to talk, but when I took her hand she squeezed it and whispered, "Daddy, don't be sad for me. I'll never be afraid again. The dolphins have made me understand that I have nothing to fear." Then she said, "I know I'm going to die tonight. Promise me that you'll cremate my body and scatter my ashes in the sea where the dolphins swim. They have left me with a great feeling of peace in my heart and I know they will be with me on the long journey that lies ahead." Just before dawn she woke and said, "Hold me, daddy, I'm so cold." And she died like that in my arms a few minutes later - passing from sleep to death without a ripple. I only realised her suffering was over because her body became colder and heavier.
'We cremated her as she wanted and went out the next day to scatter her ashes in the ocean amongst the dolphins. We were all crying, I'm not ashamed to say; not just my wife and I and our three other children, but even the sailors on the boat that had taken us out into the bay. Suddenly, through our tears, we saw the great arching silver shapes of Nat and Tursi leaping out of the water ahead of us. They had come to take our daughter home.'
From 'Acquainted with the Night' by Allegra Taylor.
Note: In the UK, the Starlight Foundation (see under Organisations in the Resources chapter) attempts to grant the wishes of critically ill children.
Like Scott Nearing, described earlier in this chapter, Caroline, a nutritionist, decided to stop eating for the weeks before she died. Death by fasting, an alternative to euthanasia (as discussed in the Manifesto for the Dying chapter), is a subject which the Natural Death Centre is particularly interested in researching.
'Joan' very different. She decided to explore her own dying process through an LSD programme. Starting off as a housewife and mother, Joan became a spiritual adventurer, using her death to explore the meaning of her life and to re-experience her childhood.
Andy, Claudia Melnyk's husband, died in her arms at home after Claudia had experienced and rejected the impersonal, regulated hospital environment.
There again, just as there are societies to encourage home births, there should be societies for home deaths. Being looked after at home is more trouble, of course, just as home cooking takes more time. But dying in hospital as most people do now, stuck full of tubes in white rooms, surrounded by sufferers and strangers, with those you love kept at the end of a telephone, is a sad and bad ending. Caroline thought being sent to hospital to die is like being put in a skip. (Again, no disrespect to builders or doctors.)
At home in August, Caroline finished planting our garden, with seeds and bulbs identified with little flags, so I would know what to expect the next spring and summer. She gave two interviews: one at the beginning of the month, for the Guardian, on her sense of death, as we ate lunch; the other from her bed, at the end of the month, for 'The Food Programme', on the meaning of her work.
Our home filled with family and friends and flowers. Pain was the only uncertainty. The surgeons had warned me that obstruction caused by the cancer would eventually be horribly painful. Not so; Dr Anne Naysmith, consultant at our local community hospital, a woman about Caroline's age, disagreed; and with a careful cocktail of drugs, Caroline rested at home, and took responsibility for her death, simply by stopping eating, two weeks before she died. Around midnight as her last day began, she foresaw her death. How was it - what did the thought feel like? 'Oh, lovely,' she said; and we laughed. And it was lovely to be with her when she died.
From 'The Good Fight' by Geoffrey Cannon.
That was how Caroline's husband Geofrey Cannon saw her death. Her friend Judy Sadgrove was the Guardian interviewer:
She was resting after a long conversation in which she described what it was like to die. As she spoke, I could forget her gaunt and fleshless body. I'd known her as the campaigning nutritionist, attacking the food industry and the Government.
The ultimate irony was that Caroline was dying from cancer of the colon. Despite her emaciation, her spirit was still strong. Her campaign now was to urge us to come to terms with death in general. We are all so afraid of death, she said.
There was a phase when every time she shut her eyes, she'd see her own face, pallid, yellowish, grey, empty - already dead. She had visions a religious person might construe as significant. Towering crucifixes reared above her. But to Caroline the crosses were simply the archetypal symbol of death. 'After all, when I was young I went to church every week and gazed at crucifixes. Death in Christian society is mentioned only in association with Jesus. Were I a Muslim I would probably dream up quite another symbol.'
She derived most comfort from the regular presence of a healer, Julian Leech. 'I love seeing him. Not because I think he's going to come up with a miracle cure but because he's so relaxing to talk to. He's used to being with people who are dying and he has tremendous respect for the process, with no rejection or fear.'
'I have to live with it. Why can't other people? I know they find it difficult and disgusting, but whoever said that life was easy? Or that dying was a piece of cake? What do they want? Tinsel and gift-wrapping?' These are the people who said 'Poor you' and bought their way out with flowers. Caroline didn't feel poor. She was consumed by pain, which made her sometimes tense and fractious, but she was not poor. She did not want an Enid Blyton attitude to death. Indeed, she felt she had to be viciously blunt in imposing her death on the world. 'Dying is an alien state. You have to make the effort to communicate otherwise you are totally cut off. And you have to help others come to terms. Although I wasted much precious energy trying to prop up other people, I slowly learned who was important and who wasn't.'
Caroline has shone some light on the mystifying business of dying. She has been brave enough to expose her fear and other people's. We cling to life, avoiding thoughts of death until the very end. Surely that's too late?
From The Guardian (Sept. 7th 1988).
'Joan' and LSD therapy for the terminally ill
At her first LSD session Joan began an inward journey packed with illuminating visions and insights.
Joan felt she 'became electric with fantastic energy' going through her. It was so much energy that no individual could contain it and handle it effectively; it was commensurate with the entire universe. It became clear to her that she contained so much energy that in everyday life she had to deny it, misuse it and project it on other people in a disowning fashion. She had a flash of herself in various stages of her life, trying on different roles - daughter, lover, young wife, mother, artist - and realised that they could not work since they were inadequate containers for her energy. The most important aspect of these experiences was their relevance for the understanding of death. Joan saw the magnificent unfolding of the cosmic design in all its infinite nuances and ramifications. Each individual represented a thread in the beautiful warp of life and was playing a specific role. All these roles were equally necessary for the central energy core of the universe; none of them was more important than others. After death the life energy underwent a transformation and the roles were recast. Joan saw her role in this life to be a cancer patient and was able to accept it.
'For what seemed like a fairly long time, I experienced my present family in terms of preparing them for my death. There was a scene in which I finally told them, after preparing myself for some time. In a sequence of scenes I was able to say goodbye to my children, my husband, my father and other relatives, as well as friends and acquaintances. I did it in a very individualised way, with regard to the personality and special sensitivity of each of them. Tears followed, but after a time there was warmth and cheer; at the end they all gathered around me to take care of me. I recall their fixing warm and sweet things to eat. After this I spent some good bit of time saying goodbye to them and to my husband - in turn - and realising that there were caring people who were going to look after them. I said goodbye to them too, and felt that something of me would live on in them.'
The second session proved to be very beneficial for Joan. She became reconciled to her situation and decided to spend her remaining days in a spiritual quest. After a vacation that the family spent on the west coast, she decided to say goodbye to her husband and her children. She thought that it would save them from the painful process of watching her progressive deterioration and make it possible for them to remember her full of life and energy. In California Joan remained in close contact with her father, who was himself interested in the spiritual path; he introduced her to a Vedanta group.
At her third and final LSD session:
'Toward the end of the day I became suddenly aware that I had found a way to legitimise my lifelong sadness: to become terminally ill. The irony of this situation was that I then found happiness and felt relief in this discovery. I wanted to get into the sources of my sadness. I saw that from very early my mother had not much to give me; that, in fact, she looked to me to give her. did indeed have more to give her than she me. I experienced this as a heavy burden.
'I had much discussion with my father about sadness, what is wrong with it and why it is so discouraged by others. I described to him how much energy I expended pretending to be glad or happy or to smile. I talked about the beauty in sadness - sad sweetness, sweet sadness. I am not sad any longer that I am to die. I have many more loving feelings than ever before.'
After Joan's death her relatives and friends on the east coast received the invitation for a memorial get-together that she wrote personally when she was still alive. After they had all assembled at the appointed time, they were surprised to be addressed by Joan's voice from a cassette tape. It was much more than an unusual and moving farewell. According to the participants, the content and tone of her speech had a powerful comforting effect on those who had come to this meeting with a sense of deepest tragedy.
From 'The Human Encounter with Death' by Stanislav Grof
Eighteen months ago, my husband Andy was dying. The brain tumour gave him no choices - but I knew which he would prefer. In hospitals he was always confused and disorientated. He lost his identity, becoming the nil-by-mouth or bed two. And visiting him, I was ever, myself, conscious always of other visitors, the routine, the regulations. If our children were allowed in, they fidgeted, wishing themselves elsewhere; if they were not, I worried about them. And I dreaded the return journey, fretted about shopping, household chores, the shortness of days spent travelling, waiting, visiting, travelling.
Medical institutions necessarily dictate conditions - where patients sleep, wash or eat; where, when, and even if they can see visitors. One cannot control the environment - cleaners bang around the beds, telephones ring unanswered, night nurses chatter and patients call out in pain or delirium. My visits often coincided with Andy's periods of irritability or drowsiness, with his meals or with the doctors' rounds, when I would be banished to the corridor. The impersonal atmosphere accentuated the awful distance that can develop between a dying person and those caring for him. Terminal illness involves enormous emotional struggles with guilt, fear, anger and grief. I spent hours staring through train windows blurred by tears. How much easier to cope with all this in the privacy of home.
To allow the choice of dying at home, several factors must coincide. The local health authority must provide nursing back-up, illness and patient must be manageable, and all parties concerned must agree. It is a challenge. But why not think of it as a luxurious alternative package to the NHS? Imagine the brochure:
Choose Home Ward, the truly private scheme; a single room, unrestricted visiting, choice of meals, total privacy. What more could one want?
Home nursing held few fears for me: I was used to helping Andy dress, wash, walk and eat. His progression towards death was a gradual decline, a series of 'lasts'. The last time he could walk, stand or sit without support, raise his head, speak or smile. In hospital, Andy was always 'as well as can be expected'. Now I knew exactly how well he was expected to be - and the nurses knew that I knew. It was such a relief to speak openly - no more clichéd 'comfortable' nights. I knew what he was eating, drinking, even excreting - and I knew exactly when he stopped. I watched his muscles losing power, his eyes losing sight, heard his last words, saw his last smile. When his circulation failed I warmed his chilled flesh with my own body. In hospital I could only hold his hand; at home I slept in his bed.
Family and friends came daily to say goodbye with a kiss, a touch or just a look. As the tumour mounted its final attack, it took with it the bizarre and aggressive behaviour that had blighted our lives and returned the original Andy, gentle, laughing, loving.
Normal family life carried on; his mother sat beside him, the children went to school, the sun shone. June, the district nurse, was briskly down to earth. 'If he dies in the night,' she warned me, 'don't call the doctor until morning, because he won't come!' And although we had accepted for months that Andy was dying, she told me firmly, 'You must let him go.' She was right. I stopped trying to involve Andy in the life that was leaving him behind and concentrated instead on letting him move towards death. Late one night, Andy's breathing became laboured. The locum GP said, 'You do know he is very, very ill?' meaning, 'You do realise this man is dying?' I assured him I knew. Somehow I also knew this night would be our last together. I held Andy in my arms and talked to him for hours. I told him that he was dying, that he need not worry about me, our children or his elderly mother. He had fought long enough: it was time for us both to let go.
He took three last breaths and at 4.43am time stopped for him. Although he lay still and sightless, I knew the essence of him was there with me and I kept right on talking while I closed his eyes, washed his face and called the children in.
The hours after his death were totally private. We could each say goodbye in our own time, our own way. There was no one to pull curtains around his bed, send his body to the mortuary or hand me a bundle of his clothes. We all look back on Andy's final illness as a positive time of immense tenderness which we were privileged to share. Perhaps it was Andy's last gift. With his passing went all our fear of death.
From an article by Claudia Melnyk in The Guardian (March 3rd 1990).
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