Intimacy with Death - Passing in Peace

I have always been very uncomfortable with death. Maybe because I was afraid of my emotions overwhelming me. The finality shocked me in such a way that it felt unbearable.

As Spirit would have it, this has become one of the most humbling and powerful parts of the work I’ve been called to do.

I recently read a poem (by “lilies abounded”) that feels so much like what transitional-support care has felt like for me:

"I hope death is like
being carried to your bedroom
when you were a child
& fell asleep on the couch
during a family party.
I hope you can hear the laughter
from the next room."

Years ago, as I was first opening to quantum work within my practice, I had a practice member who had a baby in the throws of world events in 2020. She felt isolated, and was experiencing postpartum depression. She confided that things had gotten worse, and she was having intrusive thoughts about wanting to die, but she didn’t actually want to die. She and her husband were concerned, so she came in for care.

I asked about what else was going on in her life. She said that her grandmother, to whom she was incredibly close, was in hospice and had nearly passed away and came back several times and it was very stressful for her and her family.

“I wonder if you could be feeling your grandmother’s feeling of wanting to pass on?”

She grew quiet and said, “that makes sense.”

We normally do acupuncture sessions together, but this was different. I told her, it’s possible that as we do this work, or shortly after, your grandmother may be able to pass. Do you want to continue?

“Yes,” she said.

So I gently moved my hands in her energy field, a few inches from her body. I could sense the energy from her grandmother that was overlying her own blueprint… there were some areas of soul-work that were available for healing, unwinding, and bridging in unconditional love, compassion, forgiveness, and the safety of letting go.

We still did our acupuncture session, and were together for less than an hour. She left feeling lighter, and I continued seeing practice members. At the end of the shift, I felt drawn - almost as if by a magnet - to the room in which we did her acupuncture session. In our office, we call it “the space of infinite possibilities” and the walls are painted with stars… I looked in the room, but there was nothing left undone - the sheets were clean, the lights off… and I kept feeling pulled to the crystal singing bowls in the space. As I stood before them, spontaneously picking up the mallets to play them… the field instantaneously opened up and her grandmother’s higher self was as present with me in that room as she was earlier that day. My higher self started talking to her, as if I were talking to a beloved child. How beautiful she was, how well she’s done, how loved she is, what a beautiful job and life-well-lived… I was witnessed my own consicousness speaking this without words, as an observer, as I gently stroked her energy field with my words and energy like you would stroke a child’s hair and face as they’re drifting off to sleep.

Her energy began to feel so peaceful, and in a state of loving surrender, that it was ‘okay’ now, and I felt the energy leave almost as quickly as it appeared and ‘the field’ closed, and I was present again in the space, with the sounds of the singing bowls still ringing in the room.

I shook off the energy, my normal consciousness not exactly certain what in the world that was, and I went to have a meeting with a team member.

After our hour-long meeting, I shared with him what had happened. As we were walking out to our cars my phone alert went off. I had a message from my practice member that her grandmother had passed away an hour earlier, at the same time I was magnetized into ‘the space of infinite possibilities.’

I cried as I realized the power and beauty of how connected we all really are, how ‘real’ this work truly is, and that love heals in the deepest, and truest ways - beyond any limitations we could imagine, including our modern conceptions of time and space.

I now know that intimacy with death is intimacy with Life.

It’s intimacy with LOVE that knows no limits.

It’s the continuation of the sacred dance - leading, following, building tension, surrendering, dissolving, and renegotiating, reorienting, reorganizing - transitioning into a new expression of the same endless Love that is so big it brings me to tears, even as I’m writing now. We don’t have to be afraid, and even if we are, the love is bigger, and it’s always right there, waiting and ready for us to receive it. <3