MY WEEKLY BLOG<\/p>\n
The Final Gift<\/p>\n
When you graduate from this realm into the next, if you\u00a0could leave one gift to the ones you love, what would it be? People leave
letters for their children, favorite articles of clothing or homes and cars and\u00a0money. These things are wonderful and they are tangible. They have weight, they\u00a0spark memories and foster peace of mind. But if you could pick something\u00a0intangible that would live on in someone else\u2019s heart instead of on a shelf, in\u00a0a garage or in a bank account, what would you choose? What pearl of knowledge\u00a0or wisdom would you want to leave behind?<\/p>\n
This pondering brings to mind a gift that a friend named Isa\u00a0left me. She was 62, she was dying from cancer, it had been a long journey and she\u00a0had been in a lot of pain. When it was clear that her time was up, a few\u00a0friends and I gathered at her bedside. She was on morphine which she had\u00a0decided to keep at a minimum so she could stay conscious and she was talking to\u00a0us. A woman she had known for years, they had walked a spiritual path together,\u00a0sat on a chair and read passages aloud from the Tibetan Book of Living and\u00a0Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche. I was sitting on Isa\u2019s bed when she lifted up her
head and said, \u201cI\u2019m not ready to go yet.\u201d She looked slightly troubled and we\u00a0let her know that the timing was up to her. We would stay with her. She\u00a0relaxed, closed her eyes, and dropped into a meditative state. We all breathed
with her.<\/p>\n
About twenty minutes later, Isa opened her eyes, they were\u00a0bright and alive, and she said, \u201cOh, this isn’t so bad.\u201d She died in the next
moment. It was breathtaking. When she said those words, \u201cOh, this isn’t so\u00a0bad,\u201d she gave me and her other friends a glimpse into the possibility that\u00a0dying was not so bad. In fact, it was okay. I cried at the loss of her but also\u00a0because she had given me hope about the greatest mystery of life. Hope about\u00a0death. I decided then and there that if it was in my power to remain conscious\u00a0when I died and offer my people a final gift of hope like Isa did, I would do\u00a0that. To me, that was the greatest thing that anyone could offer and if it was\u00a0at my fingertips, I wanted to give it away.<\/p>\n
I did volunteer work with AIDS when it was surging back in\u00a0the eighties and nineties and I saw that everyone dies in a different way. Some\u00a0people are frightened and others are peaceful. Some people are in great pain\u00a0and they need heavy doses of morphine and others die in their sleep or in a\u00a0multitude of other ways. There is no right or wrong way, no worse or better way\u00a0to die. We are all on our own paths, we all lived our lives differently and we\u00a0have no idea where, when or how we\u2019ll die. But if I have a choice, I’d like to leave\u00a0people hope and soothing when I breathe my last breath.<\/p>\n
I was so lucky to have been there with Isa. Sitting at\u00a0someone\u2019s death bed is rigorous and requires a great deal of letting go, but
for me, I never felt as alive as I did when I was witnessing someone leaving\u00a0their body. It was an opportunity to leave my ego at the door, forget about myself\u00a0and my fear and bring my complete attention to the present moment. I held\u00a0hands, I prayed, I breathed and I listened as each person made the inevitable journey\u00a0from the physical world into the vastness of the universe. It was always a gift\u00a0but the greatest one I ever received was what Isa left behind. Hope. Less fear.\u00a0Great possibility. The idea that dying could really be okay.<\/p>\n
Death and dying expert Stephen Levine said, \u201cDon’t worry.\u00a0Dying is perfectly safe. Everyone is doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
MY WEEKLY BLOG The Final Gift When you graduate from this realm into the next, if you\u00a0could leave one gift to the ones you love, what would it be? People leaveletters for their children, favorite articles of clothing or homes and cars and\u00a0money. These things are wonderful and they are tangible. They have weight, they\u00a0spark […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":2047,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2048\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}