The universal questions for all of us as we begin to face our own mortality are: “Where am I headed? What will happen when I die?”
I know that I never really gave those questions much thought until I was moving through the process of my father’s last nine months of life after he was given a diagnosis of terminal cancer.
My father did not struggle. He seemed to accept the inevitable in a way that showed little fight or anger.
He had moments of terror, mostly at night, when I would hear him scream out in the darkness.
When I rushed in to calm him at his bedside, his eyes were wide with a frightened stare that rather shook me to the core.
It seemed that in the stillness of sleep, his sub-conscious was bringing forth some unresolved issues and some of the images left him unnerved in a way I had never seen before.
I also watched this same occurrence with my mom as she lived with me in her final year of her life.
Gradually those fears seemed to subside, but the choice still remained for both of them to fight death or accept it.
Experiencing the imminent death of a loved one brings home a very deep truth that can prepare us for our own journey towards the inevitable ending of our physical life here on Earth. The desire to “age well” necessitates taking an inner journey into our beliefs and understanding aging from a spiritual perspective.
A process of learning how to surrender, if started before the time that death is sitting right on our doorstep, seems to offer an opportunity to ease our fears of completely letting go and opens our eyes to possibilities that perhaps we have refused to allow ourselves to experience.
We have all heard or read stories about people chronicling near death experiences and sharing their discoveries of “seeing or being in the light,” yet we seem to still question their validity because we have not been there ourselves.
I know I was always fascinated with it all at quite a young age.
But it wasn’t until I was faced with the frightening feeling of being completely out of control, when I knew there was no way to “save” my father from his demise, that I had to face the day to day feeling of helplessness, watching him slowly succumb to his illness.
It was the night that we moved him from his home to the palliative ward at the hospital that shook my tired caregiver body to its most fragile questioning of what life was all about.
Why this? Is there nothing left for me to do to help him? It was in this moment of knowing I didn’t have any power within myself alone to handle the overwhelming emotions and feeling of inadequacy I was left with as I surrendered the care of my father over to the hands of someone else.
Coming home to get some rest, I had to face a much deeper truth and it took me to a place that I had never been before.
A telling moment when you either choose to fight, deny or surrender to the fact that we are spiritual bodies, not just physical ones. For me, this challenge was too big to tackle on my own. I asked for help with a heart that was truly open. Open because my dad needed it to be and so did I.
And just like someone who crosses into another realm because their heart has stopped, so I did as well, although without the necessity of having to die. No one was more surprised than me as I felt this light envelop me and a calming vibration begin to fill every cell of my body.
There was no mistaking that this was a form of energy much greater and more powerful than me alone. It was an expansion into another realm and left me with a knowingness I did not have before, an understanding of the “ light” and the incredible unconditional love that goes with it.
My life path changed forever from that moment. When you are faced with insurmountable odds, it offers a gift that you can choose to receive or not.
You simply have to decide to surrender.
As the aging journey of life’s passage presents things we feel unable to handle, we can choose to take one step inward before taking one step outward, however small.
Each occurrence is an opportunity to practice letting go of worry and finding the “middle way.”
This is a sense of balance or moderation that can come from practising to find a still point within. Any spiritual practice is like a lute string. If it is too tight or too loose it does not make a good sound.
Only when it is tuned just right can its music be heard. Curiosity and openness are trademarks of healthy aging.
Engaging in life when it flows easily with joy and happiness in the air is wonderful. But, perhaps even more in its darkest moments, we are given an opportunity to truly find our true natures and connect again with the light.
You just have to take the chance and believe it’s possible. We are all going to get older, but it is through contemplation that we find wisdom.
