I’ve been running into dying and death everywhere.

The unexpected and shocking death of a friend, not close but present in my life for over fifteen years, still unsettles me, forcing me to ponder how life can take such twists and turnings.

As I often do, I seek wisdom through reading, discovering The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief by Francis Weller. He emphasizes the crucial role that enlivening ritual can play in our lives, how far we are from incorporating life giving ritual into the fabric of our lives, and the cost of our soul’s disconnection to others and to the creation. I am challenged once again to incorporate ritual more intentionally. I pause in this writing to light the candle I keep beside my computer and to hold my clear glass archetypal Jerusalem cross to my heart, inviting the Great Spirits of Earth, Air, Fire and Water to guide me. Writing faithfully is one of the meaningful rituals which I neglect at great cost to my soul.

I am also reading Being Mortal: Medicine and what matters in the end by Atul Gawande during this week of the anniversaries of the deaths of my late husband 14 years ago and of my mother 41 years ago. Once again I am experiencing the mystical nature of their living and of their dying which deepens my understanding of, connection with, and love for them. Their presence is alive in me and supports and encourages me to write. Being Mortal affirms this remembering and reminds me of the crucial need to bring consciousness/awareness to our intentions for living fully  and of our preparing to live well into our dying.

Watching the DVD/youtube video “Griefwalker”, pushed me further into considering the choices we have about how we live and how we can accompany people who are encountering dying and death. Canadian Stephen Jenkinson, the Griefwalker who was theologically educated at Harvard Divinity School, believes that we cannot love life if we do not embrace death. This is a haunting, poetic depiction of encounters with and conversations about dying and death–and life.

I think of Ira Byock’s The Four Things That Matter Most: A Book About Living recommended by the hospice social worker when my older brother was dying of pancreatic cancer. The four things: “Please forgive me,” “I forgive you,” “Thank you,” and “I love you.” Words that define a courageous and cleansing process for both the person dying and those who care about that person.

I will come back to my interest in living well into dying in future blogs. In the meantime, I invite responses of any length so that I continue to write in the company of others. Thank you.

copyright, Joy Anna Marie Mills, 2016