When Death Comes for You…Celebrate.

I know death.  I know it intimately and have known it from a young age.
This is where my relationship with death started:

I was four months shy of 10 years when my mother transitioned.

Except back then I did not use that word “transitioned”.

I used the word “died”.  Because that is the word every one around me used.

I can remember those few days surrounding her death all too well even 32 years later.

At the time, I was living with one of my mom’s sisters.  My mom had been sick the majority of my life with the big “C”, cancer. A year or so earlier, someone or someones in the family had decided that things were bad enough with mom, that my brother and I would need to separate (not a bad thing in my book :-P) and need to go live with each of my mom’s two sisters.  I spent the rest of the year with my best friend’s family before heading west to move in and be adopted by my mom’s next oldest sister.

Christmas & New Years,1986.  I traveled back to Kansas City to be with my mom, at which time her parents shared that “your mom might not make it.”  I distinctly remember hearing those words and wondering what that meant, having no concept of death or model to put these words into.  Of course, as I am sure most kids in our modern age believe, I believed that my mom was a superhero and there weren’t nothin’ that could take her permanently away from me.

Fast-forward to the week of February 9, 1987.  My aunt sits me down to explain my mom was in a coma, “a deep sleep which she might not wake up from”.

“What the heck does that mean?” my young brain tries to process.

Friday, February 13, 1987.  My teacher is called down to the office.  Somehow, I knew why.  Later that afternoon, upon returning home, my aunt sits me on her lap to share my mom had died that morning. Even now, I cannot be sure I understood what all this meant for my mom, or for me or for life.  I cannot remember being sad or crying.  All I can remember is being stunned.  Looking back, I am sure I was in a state of shock – which led to a state of numbness.  She had gone and done what I had thought wasn’t possible.

She had left me. Permanently.

Death had come for me in the most visceral way one can experience while still alive.  And I had no concept, model or stories to help me understand the massive implication of how my life was utterly and irrevocably altered in the space of just one breath.

At 9 years old living in a culture that shuns death, I was not taught how to grieve the dead so that I could celebrate life.  Instead, the day of her wake I was sat down by a dear family member- who meant so well – and told that reincarnation was impossible.  That led into a sharing of how to be “saved by Jesus” I think…but my head was spinning and I couldn’t make sense of anything except that my mom wasn’t coming back to me.

Later at the wake, I forced my numbed, hollowed legs to move me to the front of the room where my mother’s casket resided.  I didn’t know how to brace myself to see what I saw next.  As I edged ever so carefully forward, leaning in over the open casket, my breath caught, then stopped altogether.  My head started spinning with a million different thoughts and none at the same time.  I had to look away yet I didn’t want to lose sight of what I was seeing.

There was my beautiful, soft voluptuous mom as she always looked.  She was all made up wearing one of her favorite dresses.  This was my mom…my mom!  I had sat and watched her make herself look like this so many times in my young life.

Yet it wasn’t.  This wasn’t my mom at the same time.  There was something eerily wrong.  There was no movement.  None at all.  It wasn’t just the fact she wasn’t breathing – there was something else.  This was her body, but this wasn’t her.

“If this was her body but wasn’t her – where was she?!?!?!  How was it that she wasn’t in there any more? What was I supposed to do with all of this!?”

My young brain couldn’t reconcile what it was seeing. I kept thinking she was going to sit up and start talking to me.  Yet I knew she wasn’t going to – yet was convinced she would.

Instead of waiting for her to sit-up I quickly moved away.  Where? Anywhere. Anywhere else so I didn’t have to be forced to see what wasn’t a possibility, what was real but wasn’t.   I couldn’t wait for my aunts to drive me away from this place.

Away from this idea and concept of Death.  Away from this reality.  Away from Death.

GRIEF IS THE BEST GIFT AND GREATEST PRAISE YOU CAN GIVE THE TRANSITIONED, AND YOURSELF.
It wouldn’t be until my late 20s that I would start to full-on-grieve the death of my mother.  A process that sometimes feels it will never, ever end.

Especially since Death has continued to be no stranger to me.  As I know it ain’t been a stranger in your life.

My great-grandmother died shortly after my mother.  My dad, though he had left our family when I was shy of two, I would lose him again to Cancer just after turning 19.  In my teens, I had friends lose parents, and cousins lose friends.  My grandparents were gone before I was 25.  My official guardians – all dead but the daughter.

(Maybe you don’t want to be a friend or relative of mine…haha.)

Little did I know back then that there were also hundreds of other “deaths” that had happened all around me and in my life.  This is again because I had no story, no model to understand how much Death IS part of Life.

Death happens every year, as it is happening now as Fall fast approaches us and our Mama Earth prepares for Her Death cycle of Winter.

Death happens every day as the Sun goes to bed and we retire to sleep.

Death happens every breath as we exhale what once was just a moment before.

Death happens every time we have an opportunity to let go of something BIG or small in our life.

Death happens every time a baby is born out of the womb.

Death happens every time there is a vegetable picked, cooked and eaten.

Death happens every time a young adult is dropped off at college, a business sold, a relationship ends, a school year ends or a move that takes you away from where you have been living.

Death is part of life.  Death creates space for life to happen – to continue, to flourish.
Without an understanding and allowing of Death –
Life without Death becomes Destruction and Life Ceases to Flourish.

In my 32 years since my mom’s death, I have learned so much about Death that I could write a book (and might be doing that!).

Yet, one of the greatest lessons I have learned is how to see Death and Life as one of the same – making room to both grief and give praise, to be both sad and find joy simultaneously.

For when something dies, for when something transitions and changes out of its current status – and when this death is accepted, allowed and given space – there is room for something new, something exciting and possibly even better just around the corner waiting to be born.

If we allow ourselves the space to grieve ~ which allows for the decomposing process of the old to be alchemically altered, creating great compost and soil for the new life ~ then we can find joy and praise in the same heartbeat.

As my life is bringing me yet again into some mighty big transitions out of a life I have known into a life of unknowns, I desire to bring this concept of Grief and Praise – of Celebration of the Life/Death/Life cycle into our Dance.

How fitting that it is Equinox just the week before we dance!

In parting, here are some questions for you to ponder and ideas for the Dance.

Consider taking 5, 10, 20+ minutes to journal on:

• How often, if ever, do you allow yourself to slow down, honor and feel, taste, experience the passing of your life experiences – small and big, pleasant and not so pleasant?  How do you allow this if you do?  How would you like to move into this, if you do not?
• Where and what have you not allowed yourself to fully grieve the passing or disappearing of?
• What has been birthed out of that space that was created?  Or what do you wish to create out of that space?
• What stories of death you were told about as a child and how that has formed your adult world?
• How can you view grieving and praise as one in the same?
• Where and how is death coming for you in your life now?  How are you welcoming it?  How are you avoiding it?  How would you like to Move with it so it can become your medicine?

For the Dance:

• Martin Prechtel in his book The Smell of Rain on Dust: Grief and Praise speaks of grief having a sound.  What is your relationship to allowing yourself to make sounds?   Have you ever grieved with deep wails and sounds from the gut?  What would it take for you to allow this to happen?  Would you consider using the dance space for this?  If so, what would you need to support you?  (Please feel free to share this with me if you need extra support this dance.)
• How would you Move through your Grief and into Praise, and back again in your dance?  How could you explore your movement to allow for the stuck places where grief reside to emerge, following the energetic impulses as they unwind without inhibitions? How can you hold yourself in this?
• What would it look and feel like to dance your grief as praise to your lost loved ones, allowing the Movement Medicine to work its magic?