I was asked to be a care giver to a beautiful 72 year old women with advanced cancer. When I first met her, I felt like I had already known her, it seemed to me divine timing was at hand. She was solidly under the belief she would heal and had ever right to think so as she had kept herself alive years past what was thought possible by her doctors. She was a "medical miracle," as her daughter said. Occasionally she did talk about the reality that dying could be a potential. In any case, I set about to helping her with her daily needs, as at this point she required 24 Hr care. Although she could still walk very short distances, it was with great difficulty, and she was in extreme pain most of the time. I seem to have a gift for working with people in this capacity which I am now no longer denying to be true. I became, as I so often have in the many years of my work with others, a devoted witness to her process.
I have long had an interest in the death and dying process and in palliative care since my early twenties when I first worked for hospice. She gave me a great gift in allowing me into her life. My job description as care giver quickly began expanding. Along with her amazing daughter who I worked with closely during this whole process, we all learned together about how to manage her pain, how to deal with her changing body as it began to give way, and how to keep it real throughout it all, honouring her and her desires at each step. In our death phobic culture, we conveniently tuck death away inside hidden rooms, hospitals, and funeral homes. We forget the real face of death and in doing so we lose the valuable opportunity we have to learn about what dying is like? What do the steps and stages look like? How can we read the signs and in so doing be the best possible witness to their transition, if we are lucky enough to have the opportunity? And what's more, how can we be willing to view death and dying in its entirety so we can learn for our own selves what we all must inevitably face. Can we be willing, to not look away, to stay present the whole way through? This was my task, to look death more squarely in the eyes and be with what I saw there.
We were doing it ourselves, her daughter, myself and a small group of her closest and most loving friends. We were the hospice, the palliative care team and the funeral home. The changes came quickly and I could see them happening all along the way. With each change came a new decision of how we were going to deal with it, and I could sense her recognition or perhaps her surrendering to what was inevitably to come. A few hours after she took her last breath, her daughter asked me to come and help wash, prepare, and dress her body. It was perhaps one of the most holy and sacred tasks I have ever carried out and will never forget. Her daughter and I performed this delicate and sacred ritual together, in total devotion, with the utmost love and tenderness, we did our best. She was beautiful, still glowing from inside, somewhere, a place I could not truly name. Afterwards we both had a unique and individual experience of seeing her smile, as if she could somehow embody, for a brief moment, her gratitude of being cleaned and cared for, which I knew was very important to her. I felt tingles over my whole body as I heard her daughter describe and confirm what I had just seen with my own eyes but kept quiet, thinking it was just a figment of my imagination.
Within the next three days, people would come and go to pay their respects and to sit with her body. She looked radiant, finally at peace, no more pain. My job description then expanded once again as the date and time of her cremation were set. I was asked to be the one to drive her body to the site, where family and friends could be involved in the ceremony of her cremation, an hour and a half away . I drove her body with the light bearer as my passenger, a long time family friend who was keeper of the flame that had been kept alight for three days and with which the wood pile who be ignited from during the cremation. Life has a funny way of working out sometimes. How I came to be such a big part of this women and her daughters life I do not know but it was all perfect somehow. The ceremony was beautiful, we sang songs and one by one formed a line, each one handing the other a log until her body was covered with wood and the fire was lit. Afterwards we drank and ate a meal and shared stories and I was grateful to be included in this small circle of loving people. In the days since, her daughter has called me their death midwife, and it does seem fitting. To be present with people in their pleasure and pain, their joy and their grief, in their most vulnerable moments, in life and in death is what I do. To be with the dying, to be present to what is there, without trying to change a thing, is the greatest gifts we can give ourselves and others. When we can embrace death in its entirety, we can in turn embrace our life more fully and perhaps a bit more bravely too. I am deeply grateful for this experience, for all that she gave me and all that I was able to give. I look forward to doing more of this work in the future. To me, there is nothing more important in this life, but to embrace with open arms the shadow of death that hangs over us so that we can more fully learn how to live. 
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