Choose Your Moment

This week I heard from a man who related to me how he had been at the bedside of a dying friend.

"I slept in the living room where she rested on a recliner for two full days," he told me. "She was not responding.  When I gently touched her and said, 'It’s OK to let go,'  she showed a weak version of her beautiful smile.  I left the room for just a minute or two.  When I returned, she had passed."

There's so much about death that we don't understand, and in many cases there isn't a thing we can do about it. I'm thinking of the sudden car crash or a fall off the roof. But in researching my book, Gift of Death, A Message of Comfort and Hope, one thing I heard over and over again was how much say people do have in choosing their actual moment of passing over.

You may ask yourself why anybody would choose to die alone like the man's friend, but if you think about it, death can be a very intimate and private experience. I believe some people are just more comfortable slipping away without an audience. The reasons for this must be as varied as the people experiencing death.

In a recent interview I heard death described as an intrusion, and it certainly is. It interrupts life as we know it and once it's over nothing is ever the same. So that would make it the ultimate transformative experience, whether it's happening to you or to somebody you love. .

 It's what you do with that transformation that makes all the difference. On this Father's Day I am thinking of my own dad who has been gone for two years now. As I describe in my book, his last actions on earth were focused on those he loved rather than himself. I can't know what happened to him in the moments after he died, although I feel certain that he's doing just fine.

But what I do know is his death transformed my life, and sent me in a different direction both spiritually and actually. I think of this every time I face an audience and talk about death as a gift. For me, fear is gone, God is close, and so is my dad.