The Gift of Death

To elicit what’s real. This is the gift of death.

How can one moment be so sincere that it completely rewrites history and bends what appeared so real?

I can still remember getting the call up from my Dad telling me that my Nana, his Mum, was living out her final days. She’d already had cancer for about a year and now, like a ravished intruder, it was truly eating her old frame from the inside out.

When I got the news I was surprisingly undisturbed, I was even hopeful that for her it would be a swift and painless transition. As for my own emotions, I felt kind of indifferent. We had never been that connected, sure, when my sisters and I were young we spent time with Nana and Pa and there was an unavoidable connection through blood – yet I never felt a real and palpable closeness.

My Nana was a stern woman, with a husky, fast speaking, certain voice. She seemed to always know what she wanted, and as far as I could see she always got it because no one was game to argue.

When I think back to being a kid my desires were simple – fun, lightheartedness, warmth and stimulation. Nana had some amazing traits, but they didn’t seem to tick the boxes that made my feel safe and loved. Adding to the emotional distance I felt from Nana, there was a physical distance too. My Mum and Dad split up when I was eight, and shortly thereafter Dad moved away, so the rare moments we got to spend with Dad, often in the school holidays, were a treasured treat, this resulted in my siblings and I seeing his parents less and less, sometimes an entire year would go by without seeing them.

When my sisters and I heard from Dad that Nana was about to die we rallied together and thought we should go up and see her one last time. In my mind, I was going more to support Dad and to do what I thought was the right thing to do. Well that’s what I told myself anyway, half as a cop-out from having to face the then eerie and unknown reality of death.  The truth is I had no idea of the impact that the forthcoming encounter with Nana would have over the rest of my life.

When we arrived at my uncle’s house I remember Nana lying on the couch, thin, frail and totally worn out. We spent a couple of hours there, chatting with some family members that I hadn’t seen in years and exchanging niceties as a means to distract ourselves from the thick and weighty energy that only comes with someone being so close to death; that energy that invites us to thoroughly question and redefine what it means to live.

When it was time to go we all said our goodbyes, it was a process that was slightly awkward as I didn’t know how I was supposed to feel.  My 2 sisters were first to leave the lounge room, ushered out by my Dad, and as I was leaving I took one final look back at Nana. In this moment everything changed.

Our eyes locked, and it felt like Nana, so close to eternity, saw me through the eyes of the infinite. I felt naked like she saw straight through all of my beliefs about who I thought I was and especially straight through all of the beliefs I had about her.  Although naked, I felt completely safe and held in her gaze. In this instant my mind relaxed, my breath slowed down and I saw something interesting, something that I never new I always wanted to see – Nana.

“Goodbye Michael” she said with the same certainty that she had always had, yet it was like her hardness had ripened into sweetness. Her pride also, even at death, echoed through her voice, yet rather than being isolating and judgmental it was inviting and even boundless. It felt like those 2 words were the first and last words she ever spoke – they carried THAT much spiritual potency, or what the yogis call Shakti.

As we remained, eyes locked, the world around us dissolved and so too did the stories in my mind, not only in relation to Nana but also death. Her open and gentle eyes became windows that I could look through into the beauty of heaven itself. In the presence of the awareness of heaven I saw forgiveness in her eyes for any resentful inner dialogue I’d ever entertained about her, and I simultaneously extended a level of forgiveness back to her that I didn’t know existed. It was a forgiveness that both embraced the sadness I felt for not seeing Nana like this earlier in life and simultaneously celebrated the newfound awareness that she isn’t really going anywhere.

My awareness was swiftly swept back into the room by a loud bang. It took me a moment to realize it was the gas-strutted door automatically closing behind my sisters. I felt like I had just been on a lengthy adventure, yet in reality I knew only about 5 seconds had passed.  I walked outside ready to leave and I had a weird feeling that the relationship between Nana and I was only, really, just starting.

A couple of days after that visit, which is now about 14 years ago, Nana died and it has always fascinated me that when I think of her I always see her and feel her as I did in those few seconds of deep intimacy and connection. Before that moment I had known her for 18 years – yet 5 seconds re-wrote the whole story, just because it was so deeply real.

That moment got me wondering – who can I give my 5 seconds to? What actions or words would my own death elicit from within me? How can I bring that level of Shakti into the world now? Fuck waiting for death. And fuck being ignorant to death too. I am no longer down for exchanging niceties in the kitchen, attempting to avoid the one inevitability of life! Bring it all on, because as the old yogis say, the deeper we understand death the deeper we understand life, and more importantly, how to truly live.

I will leave you with what I learned from this encounter with Nana………

Sure, when death rears its head it we will undoubtedly be caused to think, speak and act in ways that are far beyond our perceived capacity to intimately and courageously love. To elicit what is real, this is the gift of death.
But the real invitation is to harness that love NOW.
Think that way now.
Say those words now.
Do that thing now.
When we act in a way that honors the reality of human death we become encouraged, and even curious, to find a part of ourselves that lives even beyond death. We can then harness that spark of eternity and bring it forth into this contrasting, ever-changing, impermanent life – hence bring the Human and the Being perfectly together – and that my friends is truly living.

Chat soon, big smiles
Michael