Good Death

I consider mom’s death to be a good death. She died at home, surrounded by her family, sitting in her favorite rocking chair. She had a pleasant expression on her face as if she was listening to a beautiful piece of music with her eyes closed. No pain, no struggle, no grasping for the life she was leaving behind. Only serenity.

Still, I am haunted by the memory of her lifeless body sitting in that chair. I was more afraid of that moment – the one after her last breath – than I was of the disease that ravaged her body: killer cancer.

We are afraid of death. We fear talking about it. We fear being around it. We push it far from us. We wage war on diseases that cause death. If we avoid the dark shadows of death, we believe it won’t touch us. Instead, death lingers on the edge of our consciousness.

We have nurtured a fear of death so profound that we are released from anguish only when we hear the words, “There was nothing more we could do. I’m sorry” as if death were within our control.

Wait, we can’t control death?

(images of the Grim Reaper slicing haphazardly through the human population)

Doctors are supposed to fulfill the role of savior. They stand in between you and the Reaper, waving the cloaked figure aside. Not today, they will say. Not today.

We know the limitations of doctors. We know the limitations of our bodies. For millennia we have tried to bridge the chasm between life and immortality. Medical technology extends life in certain cases, but it cannot stop the body from failing and ultimately dying. Death claims all of us.

So why are we afraid of something we can’t control?

Were we less afraid of death when we had a stronger faith in life after death?

In her last days, mom initiated palliative care under a hospice group suggested by her doctor instead of the chemotherapy treatment she had taken for over sixty weeks. Hospice offered a meditation session to help mom manage her pain. I participated in the session reluctantly. I was overwhelmed and could only focus on the thought that kept swimming through my mind – she’s given up.

Mom participated fully in meditation, though. The mental trip led her through a beautiful garden, down a flights of steps to a calm, gently flowing river. She boarded a boat with someone she knew that already had passed over, someone she loved very much. I knew immediately who was waiting for her. Mom’s mother died years before I was born when my mom was seventeen. It had torn a hole in her heart to lose her mother – she told me she missed her and thought about her mother every day. That was the person on the boat, mom confirmed later.

Ending the meditation session required mom to get off the boat and retrace her steps to return to the present time. She opened her eyes blinking and squinting even though light in the room was fading. I asked her about her experience, not expecting her enthusiastic reply.

“I liked it! It was beautiful! But I didn’t want to come back.”

Three days later, mom climbed on the boat with her mother and sailed into the great beyond. My heart is torn in two.