Eight Difficult Deaths:

Zoë
1997

Zoë, a woman in her late thirties, had had breast cancer for a while. There had been a period of remission, but now things were getting worse. Her sister Elaine, a hospice nurse, had flown out to be with her. They were with their mother. Zoë had wakened from a nap and was sitting on the couch talking to Elaine and her mother. Suddenly she began choking and bleeding from the mouth. She went to over to a sink and was spitting up the blood. Elaine and her mother helped Zoë to her bed. She was getting very confused, saying, “What’s happening? and “Who am I? “. They tried to help her focus. Elaine told her “You’re dying”. Her mother asked her if that was “OK with you”, trying to help her with the process. Elaine said “No!” vehemently and died. It was only minutes from the time she was chatting calmly.

Elaine’s partner Susan called me, describing what had happened, full of concern for Zoë, Elaine, and the rest of the family. It was midnight my time and I’d been asleep about an hour and was very groggy. Continuing to talk with Sue, I tried to get in touch with Zoë.

I found myself in the dark. I felt a strange quality of dizziness and disorientation, as if my mind were blanking out, having to re-orient several times from out of a black nothingness, to my inner images and Sue’s voice on the phone. The only other time I’ve felt like this was in the moments after a concussive blow to the head from a fall. It was very confusing and a little frightening. I couldn’t see a thing. Then a luminous figure appeared - someone I know very well, who died in ‘93. She lit up the darkness around her. I was able to follow her to Zoë, where she turned, facing me to take up a protective stance, as if she was standing between Zoë and danger. She said “Be gone!” in a powerful voice. I thought she was speaking to me and hesitated, then realized it was spoken to something behind me.

I approached Zoë and began to connect to her. She was pretty torn up emotionally, in an intense process of struggle. I don’t remember much about what happened at first; only that Zoë became more centered and settled into herself again. I saw her lift her hands to her face - they were filled with a light of incredible softness, what the Sufis call “Noor”. She slowly raised this light in cupped hands and began to gently “wash” her face with it several times. I understood that the healing I was seeing would be happening in about two weeks, and that the grace of it, the new being created by it, were already becoming simultaneous to her present state of confusion, pain, and loss and affecting it positively. There was also the sense of what her family needed to be doing to support her, and themselves, in the process of healing, which I communicated to Susan.

This was a very hard session for me, emotionally very intense. I felt shattered the next day. At the time, I thought it was the circumstances of being awakened from sleep. But looking back, I am now convinced that what I experienced was some of Zoë's experience. Months later, I am grateful for the sharing and consider it a gift. Perhaps part of what is happening in my work with those who are dying is a translation of the experience of death. The gaining of information like this may help us understand this part of our lives more fully. These and other anecdotes may heal the shadows and veils of horror, fear, and loss that cripple us and keep us, paradoxically, from the fullness of life. Zoe died a very difficult death. But she met with light and protection. And her healing was the creation of an even more beautiful being.