Eight Difficult Deaths:

Rachel January 1996

I got a call Sunday morning from my friend Miriam who told me Rachel had died the previous Friday evening. Rachel was a woman I knew from workshops and rituals we’d shared. I had done some healing work on her.

We had been hit with a big snowstorm and even though the roads were icy, Rachel had chosen to go to a dance event that evening. Her car skidded off the road and when she got out of the car, another car skidded into her. 

What I saw immediately was Rachel taking a step forward, her mouth open, gazing upward and around her with astonishment, excitement, and tremendous awe. Later as Miriam and I continued to speak, I saw Rachel bending over flowers in her lap, picking them up and dropping them slowly, with a new mother’s care, touching her friends and family. She apparently met her death without any resistance, with instantaneous acceptance and was already nurturing those who were grieving for her.

Later I spoke on the phone to her husband, seeing her standing behind him with her arms around him. As we discussed possible plans for her memorial, I offered the memorial garden here on my land as a place her women’s circle could have their own ritual, perhaps even bringing some of her ashes here. He agreed and I worried that perhaps I was asking for too much given his state of shock and pain. As if in answer to my concern, Rachel looked at me from where I saw her standing, her arms around her husband’s shoulders. She made an “O” out of her thumb and forefinger, and WINKED at me. I was floored. Rachel was definitely the loosest dead person I had ever interacted with!

Her life was always marked by an abundance of self-expression and creativity. She would wear unbelievable costumes and adorn herself with the freedom that kids have during that brief period when even the boys go around wearing capes, and imagination is reality. She was a psychologist, very successful, giving lots of workshops in addition to private practice. Her family and community grieved for her, yet many people I spoke with felt a sense of exultation flowing through their pain. 

I learned later that the car struck with such force that she was probably killed instantly, her body too badly damaged to be recognizable.