Who Helps Us Die

I really had no idea how fearful we are of death until I learned that the two groups of professionals we expect to have the most to offer on the topic of death and dying actually have the least-doctors and ministers.

What follows is a portion of an email from a recent graduate of seminary school:

“Its amazing you are writing a book about dying after having such a close relationship with someone who passed away. I bet you have a lot to say. I am so with you, in that our culture has an unhealthy relationship with death. A lot of people get nervous about what they don’t understand and can’t control- especially ministers and priests I imagine, even though they deal with it all the time. This summer I worked as a chaplain at a hospital and worked with people as they were healing and also as they were dying and it was an incredible experience- difficult and so enlightening.

One of my favorite passages about a medium in the bible is 1 Samuel 28. Its the “witch” or “medium” of Endor. Saul, who had previously kicked out all the wizards & mediums from the area, ends up seeking a medium out to contact Samuel. And it works. The thing is, even though psychics were “outlawed” the person who expelled them in the first place knows EXACTLY where to go to find one. Its threatening to people in this story because it works. And also, I imagine, because the witch is a woman. Women’s power is frightening for people- then and now.

What we are taught about death and dying and grieving here is that it varies. There is no one way to grieve or to die or to council somebody. The main thing though, is to BE with the person 100% in what they are experiencing. So if you are experiencing that it would be healing for you to go to a psychic, you should do it. And hopefully your clergy person would support you. I totally believe in all that stuff, and think that going to a psychic is totally valid and fits very nicely into Christianity.”

None of the other men and woman of the cloth had anything to say about dying that you couldnt learn at a Christian funeral. At first I was mad, but then I realized it just confirmed what I thought -that regardless of our line of work-we all end up on the finish line fearful and unprepared.

Doctors are even more unprepared to face death, be it their own or the death of a patient. Some of that may have to do with the fact that their first encounter with a dead body is a cadaver. Here are some interesting facts on death and doctors:

How a doctor relates to death is determined, in part, by the speciality they enter. Death to a
• Most doctors see death as a defeat of what they are trying to accomplish
• One study indicated about 25% of doctors avoid the fatally ill.
• Only one-half are willing to tell a patient they are dying. Surveys, in class and National surveys, indicate about 90% of people want to know the truth if they have a terminal disease.
• 66% of doctors favor not telling the patient they are dying. Excuses for this kept secret include, “No one can predict that you are dying,” and if you are told, “you are liable to give up hope and possibly commit suicide.”
• Physicians have been found by survey to be more afraid of death than normal non-medical healthy people.
• Medical students receive very little training do you get in medical school on the subject of death.
Here are some other random musings:
On cadavers
“We’ve had fat fights. We were not blatantly disrespectful but the cadaver was dead and didn’t know what is going on.”
On the death of a loved one
How would you react if the terminally ill patient was a member of your family?
A. I don’t know and don’t like to think about it.

Social Media/email Once You Are Gone

I think this is a fascinating article about considerations as to what to do with someone’s online life once they disincarnate. Food for thought.

http://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=132617124

Sorry

Sorry I let this blog sit idle-here and now needed some attention.  Promise that I will get writing again.  Stay tuned.

Emotional Waste Management

In order to make the most of the rest of our lives whether that means the next 24 hours or the next 50 years, we have to engage in waste management of our stuff. Waste management makes me think of New Jersey where I grew up, it also makes me think of the Mafia, which makes me think of Tony Soprano which makes me think of therapy. When I started to think about negative emotions in terms of garbage, I began to focus on not only not letting garbage sit around till it smells but concepts such as recycling, composting and the most recent trend with respect to garbage which is to create less of it.

When we die, someone has to go through our stuff and get rid of it, hopefully that person performs that task lovingly and can see the story your accumulation of belongings weaves, however, I can tell you from having just gone through my boyfriend’s belongings, you will leave things behind that you don’t want others to see. As I was going through this process, people would ask “What is the strangest thing you found?” My response was that he had no porn, what man who saves everything has no porn?

That said, it is important to remember that when you die, someone will be going through your stuff, be it online accounts, closets, drawers or address book. If there are things that will embarrass you (not that there are emotions on the otherside) or more importantly hurt people, wouldn’t it be better to deal with those things now? Chances are if you are embarrassed about items in your possession, they probably shouldn’t be in your life-just sayin

The same can be said of our emotional garbage, if you don’t go through it now, you will just carry it around with you, it will start to smell, it will get in your way, it will prevent you from seeing what else you have. Just like getting rid of garbage and taking the trash out, there are several things we can do with emotional garbage we accumulate in our lives.

Let’s take a look…..

Litter. Every once and a while I will still see someone just throw trash out the window of a car or just leave some big useless piece of furniture laying out front knowing the garbage people will not take it.
We can also be emotional litterbugs. This happens when we just throw our emotional garbage wherever we feel like with no regards for its impact on ourselves or others. Basically, we make it someone else’s problem. It is certainly important not to be a litterbug of our emotional garbage, in this day and age-you might get arrested for public dumping.

Dumpsters. Sometimes when people have a lot of garbage to get rid of, they rent a dumpster. Dumpsters are expensive and the main problem with using a dumpster to get rid of trash is sometimes we throw things out that we still needed, or merely dispose of things that could have been reused, recycled or placed in the compost pile just to get our money’s worth out of the dumpster. The same holds true with our emotional garbage, we want to be careful of what we discard and how we dispose of it as to not get rid of core aspects of ourselves that we will need down the road. Also we want to put some thought into what we get rid of. If we don’t often times we just go out and replace items we have just thrown out.

Recycling. Recycling doesn’t end when you put your glass bottle in the recycle bin. Another thing about recycling is that it takes a great deal of energy to recycle not only in terms of the recycling process but the transportation of the waste to and from the recycling center and the added cost or energy associated with reusing the recycled materials. The same holds true with recycling emotions, the process begins when you place the thought in the bin for recycling. From there, it must be processed.

Composting. Composting is messy, smelly and requires a compost pile. It takes a while for garbage to evolve into usable compost and until it does you have to deal with it, but the value is that you have transformed something bad into something good.
Each of us needs a compost pile where we take the negative experiences in our past and transform them into what nourishes our future.

Eliminating
Garbage.
Any steps you make that reduce or eliminate the use of items you would normally recycle or throw away will have a significant positive impact on the environment. Choosing products that are reusable and long lasting instead of single-use disposable products will save a lot of waste. The same can be said of our emotional garbage, while having tools to recycle or compost our emotional baggage is helpful, the best approach is to evolve into a lifestyle where emotional garbage is limited. This is not to say that there will not be conflict and difficult times in your life, it is just that we develop internal laws of selection that places limits on the thoughts, ideas or even people we let into our lives. When we do this, there is no garbage to be disposed of.

Eliminating garbage is the goal going forward and that can start today-before we even finish recycling and composting the garbage we have accumulated.

Here are some waste management tools from people smarter than I:

The Seven Day Plan

Robert Holden, author of “Happiness Now!” suggests that you say the following each morning for 7 consecutive days:

“Oh, God, help me to believe the truth about myself, no matter how beautiful it is. Amen.”

Sit quietly and listen for inner guidance and then jot down your thoughts in a journal for later reflection. This allows us to take inventory-all obstacles to the truth are emotional garbage that need to be recycled or transformed into nutrition.

Negative Core Beliefs

Dennis Greenberger and Christine A. Padesky, authors of “Mind Over Mood.” Suggest creating a Negative Core Belief Worksheet. Examples of negative core beliefs include: I am not lovable, I must please everyone to be liked, or I am inadequate unless I do everything perfectly.

• Write your negative core belief at the top of an 8.5-x-11-inch sheet of paper.
  
• Under the statement, write evidence or experiences that suggest the core belief is not 100 percent true all the time.
  
  • During the first week, try to find one piece of evidence each day.
    
  • For the following week, try to find two or three bits of evidence every day.
    
  • After several weeks, there should be 20 to 25 items listed on the worksheet.
    
• Review the items and draw an overall conclusion about whether the original negative core belief actually describes your real-life experience.
  

    Remove Havoc from Relationships

Janet G. Woititz and Alan Garner, authors of “Life-Skills for Adult Children,” suggest an effective format for venting emotions in a relationship.

 

• Discuss one problem at a time
  
• Focus on the present rather than lumping a number of past events together in an imaginary gunnysack that is dumped on the other person.
  
• State the issue in specific terms of what was said, where and when
  
• Express your feelings this way: “When…(what the other person did)…then (what you felt).”
  
• Allow the other person to express himself fully without interruption
  
• Find a middle ground between what you and the other person can live with while moving forward.

Forgive Me

Aside

I came out of the gates fully of positive energy and great ideas, then the past 10 days I have been slowing down-actually experiencing grief the mental and physical effects of grief.  Today, I had to stare Valentine’s Day squarely in the face, and I am breathing a sigh of relief that it has come and gone.

Valentine’s Day seems like it is about romantic love-but actually, it is about Love, the all in compassing love that we seem to often withhold while on this earthly plane.  We withhold love for many different reasons but generally it is because we feel we have been wronged. 

According to my readings, after we die, we immediately shed everything but love by instantly experiencing waves of forgiveness.  But in preparation for eternity and to experience a little heaven on earth, I would like to focus on how to love more fully in our lifetimes.

In a word FORGIVENESS.  Mother Theresa once said: “If we really want to love, we must learn how to forgive.”

After our loved ones die, there is evidence that they communicate with us through dreams, visions, audio, touches, smells, computers, birds, coins, lamps and music with messages of love and forgiveness.

Love alone survives our physical body, but we can experience true everlasting love before passing to the other side by embracing the concept of forgiveness.  True forgiveness is mind and life altering, yet we tend to think that it is a sign of weakness.  We like to think that by withholding forgiveness we can punish the person who has hurt or harmed us.  Unfortunately,  it does exactly the opposite and has proven to have a direct impact on our physical, emotional and spiritual health. 

By embracing forgiveness, you embrace peace, hope, gratitude and joy not only will you live happier, it is quite likely you will live longer.

Many of us misunderstand the concept of forgiveness.  We tend to think of it in terms of condoning bad behavior.  Nothing could be further from the truth, the act of forgiveness has nothing to do with passing judgement on a person or his or her actions and forgiveness does not always result in a reconciliation or an ongoing relationship with the person who is forgiven.

Forgiveness is a selfish act that you undertake so that you will feel better.  The benefits of forgiveness are experienced far more by the person who forgives than the person who is forgiven. It is a decision to let go of resentment and thoughts of revenge so that the actions of the other person will lessen its grip on you.  Forgiveness brings closure to certain negative thoughts which if left unresolved will have a direct impact on your future relationships, health and well being.

The unforgiving person tends to live in groundhog day.  They tend to repeat the past.   Future experiences and relationships tend to repeat prior experiences because unresolved unforgiven thoughts and feelings and carried forward into each new experience. Failure to forgive results in a failure to connect with others and a diminished quality of life not to mention added stress and poor health.

The key to forgiveness is to change your mind or your feelings about a past event.  It can be such a transforming experience that some report they feel that they have actually changed the past.

It is important to understand that by forgiveness, you are not overlooking bad behavior, rather, you are releasing the control and power the  situation has over your life.  Forgiveness does not absolve the forgiven from the consequences of his or her actions.  You can forgive someone and at the same time determine that it is not in your best interest to have a relationship with that person.   There might also be legal or financial consequences to a past action that do not evaporate because you have forgiven the person.  It merely changes our thoughts and feelings, opening the door to new, more positive experiences.

Once we shed our physical bodies, we are provided with enough information to forgive others, but sadly, many of us are unable or refuse to forgive while we are alive.  We fear a loss of control, when actually the result of a forgiving mind is exactly the opposite.  By forgiving you regain control.

Everett L. Worthington Jr. is a clinical psychologist and professor of psychology at Virginia Commonwealth University.  He is one of the foremost experts on forgiveness in the world.

He cites that a lack of forgiveness will affect your immune function and cardio function, your heart rate, your blood pressure; it will increase the stress hormone that causes the body to store fat.

There is a hormone called cortisol which is produced by stressors such as resentments that affects your cardiovascular health, your digestion, your sexual behavior, your reproductive system, your brain and your emotions.  Everytime you relive and unforgiving thought, cortisol is introduced into your body. 

Forgiveness of sins is not unique to christianity.  In Judaism, if a person asks for forgiveness, you can say no twice — but you have to forgive the third time. If you say no the 3rd time, then you are at fault.  The holiest day of the Jewish calendar is Yom Kippur, a Day of Atonement.

Colin Tipping sets forth specific steps to take in order to achieve what he refers to as Radical Forgiveness.

Step One:  Tell the story

Step Two:  Explain why the situation is upsetting to you and the feelings associated with the act

Step Three:  Permit yourself to feel the way you do, in other words do not minimize your reaction to the situation or fault yourself for your feelings

Step Four:  Recognize that your reaction to the situation is resulting in your withholding love from yourself and that it is not our purpose to change people.  When we desire to change someone, we are denying them the opportunity to experience, grow and learn from the path that they are on.

Step Five:  Identify the areas where you may have blown the actual transgression out of proportion or given it more power or importance that is appropriate.  This often happens when an action attacks a core area of vulnerability. 

Step Six:  Taking step five one step further, identify the negative beliefs that your reaction to a situation has reinforced-be it abandonment, low self-worth, not good enough etc.

Step Seven:  Reframe these negative thought by giving yourself permission to let them go, and send yourself love and gratitude to myself.

By following these steps you can step out of the role of the victim, experience personal growth and move forward.  While certainly resolving your deepest hurts will result in the greatest relief, start small.  Once you experience success using this Forgiveness Worksheet, you will likely be more willing to tackle more complex and painful areas where forgiveness may be needed.

Again, because forgiveness is by and for you, you can forgive people who may not even know they hurt you and you can forgive people who are living or dead.  That said, the sooner the better especially if your act of forgiveness will set the stage for a renewed, healthy relationship with your preceived offender.

 Like I said earlier, once we die, it appears we are given enough information where this process of forgiveness happens automatically, but why wait, why not experience the freedom that comes from forgiveness while you are still on earth.  It could even set the stage for others to forgive you.

Long Distance is an Obsolete Term

Aside

http://www.legacy.com/guestbook/palmbeachpost/guestbook.aspx?n=gerald-downes&pid=147821392

Above is a link to Keith’s guest book-see the theme people loved him.  Want to know how many of those people he talked to in the past year-about 3.  He lost touch for many reasons and while I am sure he is looking down and relishing being the center of attention, for whatever reason, he denied himself the pleasure of all this love while here on earth cause he was too busy, thought these people were too busy.

My dad used to work for ATT and they had a slogan “reach out and touch some one”  so in the middle of Farmville, weather woes and mindless facebook, reach out to the people from your past and share with them your memories of them.  Find past foes and see how they have grown.  There really is no need to wait till you die to know that people celebrate your uniqueness.

How am I different?

Well as much as I hate to say it, I know I am just not that special.  That said, I am sure I didn’t invent this topic.  Well of course I didn’t-Irish FolkLore has a name for this.

I tend to act first and think later.  Therefore, without much thought or research I threw this out here to see what happens….

A quick google search shows several sites with similar concepts however they seem to start later in the process.  You don’t start planning for retirement (my current industry) at age 65, so why start planning to die when you are laying in a hospital bed.

How I see myself as different from what I have seen out there so far is that my vision for death coaching starts much earlier so that each of us has time to evaluate and fine tune our lives.

Many of the blogs and websites I explored play heavily on spirituality, psychic phenomenon and alike.  Don’t get me wrong, all of that stuff is very real and a very important component of preparing for the next level of our being, but my vision is to be a bit more earthbound, mostly because I am a fledging student of such matters.

But who knows, that is today, as I continue my journey and make sense of Keith’s death and look ahead to my own mortality, I am sure the scope of this blog will change as I do.  Baby steps-and as with everything more will be revealed.

What is this?

Death and taxes …..

After recently being the sole caregiver to my boyfriend who passed to the otherside on January 3, 2011 I had an entirely new understanding of illness, death and dying. Sadly, Keith battled leukemia unsuccessfully. In retrospect, I think that instead of buying into the medical system expecting a cure, we would have been better off preparing for his death.

Survivors think of death as a loss, doctors view it as failure. As a culture we invest billions of dollars to avoid death at all costs. I think it is time for a shift of perception. Just as we plan for other major life events be it the birth of a baby, retirement or a wedding, we should take the time to prepare for our own death.

I am not just talking about assuring that your paperwork is in order and your end of life and funeral preferences are known-althought trust me those things should not be overlooked.

What I am talking about is taking stock of your life. What is left undone, unsaid, unresolved.

Here is an exercise to get you started. Write the eulogy you would like someone to read at your funeral service. It can be a total fabrication. When you are done, use those white lies as goals and take stock of what you would like to do to help make that eulogy come to life.

Now this concept can also be used as a tool to evaluate your relationships. We have all heard of people who have died suddenly and loved ones were at odds with the deceased or hadn’t said certain things. Preparing for death be it your own or that of a loved one or familar members will eliminate the words “if only….”

Freud said psychotherapy is of no value to the Irish. Truer words have never been spoken. Gerald Keith Downes was the most complex, complicated, intense person I have ever known. He was loud and opinionated but he was also one of the most caring souls I have ever met. His compassion and generosity were as big as his mouth. Keith’s life was far from easy-he endured a less that storybook childhood, came to terms with personal demons early in life and had only a very brief career. He endured great physical and psychological pain. Despite all of this, he lived his life to the fullest extent possible-often by telling other people how to live theirs.

Keith was larger than life. It is hard for me to talk about Keith without talking about our relationship. It was the roller coaster ride of my life. As long as we had a common enemy we were unstoppable but without one we fought like there was no tomorrow. Together we endured dying parents, two battles with cancer, financial ruin, a failed geographic cure but our connection ran deep so deep it could create miracles. After a year of not speaking other than in court battles, we had a ten hour phone conversation as if nothing had happened. Something told me he was in trouble. The trouble it turned out was leukemia. For eight months we lived in hospitals our world became so tiny. We slept together in the hospital bed, we would find hiding places. During this time these hospitals were not my home-he was my home. He had a prisoner as a roommate and a man without a face. We stood side by side, with his cancer stricken blood brothers, each one fighting for the other for a brief moment, but in the end each had our his own road to ride.
People either loved or hated Keith. I had the pleasure of doing both at the same time.

Keith’s happiest times were at the ocean. Lifeguarding, fishing or just walking. He still had his lifeguard whistle, an Acme Thunder. Keith never traveled light-he prepared for every potential emergency. Mr. Safety I would call him. This included trips to the beach. One day-a young boy was stung by a jelly fish in a place a male would dread. As fate would have it, Keith had the perfect remedy in his beach knapsack-meat tenderizer. He went over to the parents and said just rub this on the sting. They were horrified but complied and magically it did just the trick. His bag of everything under the sun saved the day. When he got sick and had to pee in bags I would tell him-Keith it is like peeing in the ocean. Soon the nurses used the same line.

Keith loved fishing he would venture out on a fishing adventure and be missing for days like a drunk on a bender and return with freezers full of fish. Once he put his rod and reel down, he became the resident expert on every aspect of fishing and would let everyone at the inlet know exactly what they were doing wrong.

As many of you know Keith was a fighter, I have a letter from our college from when he got kicked off campus for fighting, but his greatest fight was not in a barroom but it was against leukemia. He was a warrior. Most oncology patients are quiet, you don’t see them walking around you don’t hear loud noises. Keith was all over the hospital, outside, up the hall, down the hall, in the cafeteria. He had Code Blues, Green, he was labeled a falling star. He would yank every tube, blood pressure cuff and monitor off. He would wander around with glowing bags of chemotherapy and once went to the parking lot to smoke a joint in his car to ease the pain. I can still see the chemo stand outside the car and him inside.

Not all nurses could handle that stubborn Irish streak. He did best with young nurses with whom he could flirt or old ones from Queens. Keith had a strong spiritual connection-he could sense danger-he could feel others people’s pain. He always told me that my father would come to visit him to console him for having to deal with my antics.

My most tender memory of him was when his father was dying. Night after night he sat with him-told him he loved him even though the man made his life a living hell. He would scream at him to keep breathing, make him eat and reminded this frail old man that he was once a burly street fighting man.

It was from watching him care for his dying father I, a spoiled hedonist learned to have the patience and fortitude to do the same for him. Cancer might think they won but it didn’t. Keith won and his prize is a better place. A place where he can fish, a place without pain. There is a hole inside me today so large it is unfathomable how I will ever fill it, my cell phone bill will drop to nothing, I know he will have my blindside for the rest of time. I am so grateful that I had the opportunity to know him better than I have ever known anyone.

In the movie Easy Rider we are told:
“The river flows, it flows to the sea, wherever that river goes that is where I want to be. All he wanted was to be free-and that’s the way it turned out to be.” So flow Keith flow, back to the sea.

The Coiste Bodhar

The death coach is part of the folklore of north western Europe. It is particularly strong in Ireland but is also found in British and American culture. In Irish folklore, it is known as the Cóiste Bodhar (chost-a-bower) and it is said that the sight or sound of the coach is the harbinger of death. It warns of imminent death to either oneself or to a close relative.^[1] In Ireland in particular the Death Coach is seen as a signifier of the inevitability of death, as the belief goes once it has come to Earth it can never return empty. Thus, once the death of an individual has been decided by a greater power, mortals may do nothing to prevent it.

The driver of the Cóiste Bodhar is said to be a headless horseman, called the Dullahan.^[2]

The Cóiste Bodhar is mentioned by W. B. Yeats in his collection Folk tales of Ireland.^[3]

In British mythology a death coach is said to be seen at times on the Royal Mile of Edinburgh, where it collects the souls of the dead.

The Cóiste Bodhar has been portrayed in the film Darby O’Gill and the Little People.^[4]

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