Death

It's Friday evening at the end of an intense few days.

Someone close to me died this week. She was 53-years-old. My aunt's best friend for nearly 30 years and a woman I saw almost everyday because she worked at the hair salon below my studio. She used to pinch my cheeks when I was little and her husband gave me first hair cut when I was one or two. My father took me to their salon, which was then in a big shopping mall. I was wearing overalls of a gender neutral color and I suppose my dad wasn't paying much attention, so they buzzed my feathery blond head, thinking I was a boy.

Even though they called the cops on my kids yoga camp this summer, our families are tight, so this death has touched me deeply.

She had bad migraines for many years. She tried a little yoga and said it helped her a lot, but then wedding season started and she got busy. Then she got sick. The doctors couldn't diagnose her. Meningitis? Tuberculosis? They ran so many tests, but nothing was conclusive. After a few months in the hospital, she got better and in July, she came back to work. She seemed very weak. She was back in the hospital at the beginning of September and it was determined she had "lymphoma of the brain." Her brain was "full of lesions."

Tragic, yes. But apparently, she died with a smile on her face.

* * *

I spent a long time contemplating death this week and the rituals surrounding it-- the wake, the funeral, the eulogy, the burial, the reception. The grieving process is interesting, because we spend our whole lives trying to avoid death and when it arrives, and there's a 100% guarantee that it will, we are so unprepared. I often wonder why.

Several years ago, I read this fascinating book called "A Year to Live." Written by Stephen Levine, a counselor and teacher of healing and meditation, it is about the process dying fulfilled and satisfied with the life we’ve lived. Having spent more than 20 years working with people in palliative care, Levine observed that most people panic at the face of death because of the feeling that they are unprepared and that their lives are somehow unfinished and unresolved.

Buddhists believe we should always live in preparation for our death, so that we leave no unfinished business behind.

With this as a premise, Levine decided to enact the ultimate New Year’s resolution: to live one year as though it was his last. After all, he writes, “No one knows the day on which the last year begins.”

Levine’s book is full of suggestions on how to do this, but his most important and most profound suggestion is to commit ourselves to the simple practice of forgiveness and gratitude.

This theme is also present in another amazing book I just finished. "Five People you Meet in Heaven" by Mitch Albom is such a beautiful story. Here's one of my favourite quotes:

"You have peace," the old woman said, "when you make it with yourself."