On Death and Dying

Every death is unique, whether sudden or after long illness. In the best cases, a person has the time and physical comfort to do the work of letting go, reviewing the life that is ending, and saying good-by to family and friends. As a bereavement intuitive and healer, and as a hospice chaplain, I've worked with many different deaths - from people for whom death was a healing, growth event for themselves and everyone they loved, to people for whom death was difficult.

By difficult, I mean that the level of shock or fear was such that the person may have remained in the consciousness surrounding the moment of death, unable to begin the process of finishing, healing, and integration typical of the first weeks after death. In some cases the person was unaware or in denial that they were dead.

The Tibetan tradition describes the soul of the departed as spending up to seven weeks in the first bardo. (A bardo is the space between states of consciousness, for example, the state between waking and sleeping is a bardo: see The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, by Sogyal Rinpoche). During this first bardo, the soul is close to the former life, reviewing and visiting, usually for about two weeks. My daughter Ericka was with us on a daily basis for the entire seven weeks, then intermittently. Next...