About nearly dying… and how that experience informs my Life…
I had an out-of-body experience after giving birth and because of this near-death experience, I struggled intensely with being back in my body after knowing euphoria, in ways that being in this body/mind/life never matches.
I have over time learned to live with this discrepancy... between the bliss of no mind/no body and the pain of being alive and having attachments (that matter so much to us) while we are here.
I easily naturally left and drifted above a scene I could not tell was about me nor due to a sudden loss of a lot of blood. Though I did not lose the memories of what happened right before, they had no meaning at the time.
My blood loss was due to an over-eager, (a want-to-be-heroic) doctor yanking out my placenta in a few strong very painful yanks.
Due to my having toxemia and hypertension, and extremely elevated blood pressure... he knew I would hemorrhage and was trying to get it over with quicker in order to get to the violent stomach pelting part so he could "save me". (So, he could return to his motorcycle ride on Skyline).
According to the doctors, I lost about two and a half pints of blood. I knew the instant it happened. I felt it all go; I felt like a balloon losing its air; my skin suddenly sunk closer to my bones. This happened after a fierce tug-a-war while he still wore his motorcycle jacket; as soon as he dislodged the placenta. He pulled hard enough that he had to jump back to avoid my sloshy placenta hitting him. I felt it release and slither out; I heard the “slosh-plop” and the nurse scramble and reach for things and declare, “We’re losing her!”
And then nothing mattered. I was above a commotion in a room that had no real meaning to me and I was blissfully drifting away without any concern at all.
Two things brought me back; though I did not really have much access to thought nor words about it then... one was a mere thread to my husband that challenge me to assess what my being “gone” would mean and I got an emotional jolt of not wanting my husband to suffer a loss of me; which begged my awareness to be where I had been versus where I was going; the other was a sudden jarring physical sensation in my nose: smelling salts a smell that made me cough, gag and suddenly intensely feel all the pain in my body, multiplied.
My out-of-body experience of euphoria happens to be the background of my frustration here on earth. Coming back was traumatizing to my nerves and my personality became highly reactive in retort. It is hard to be here happily, knowing what I know about no-thought; no-attachment, no-pain.
Perhaps I am more upset than most that life here is harder than where I went upon leaving. For me; I have been more angry than sad to be here having to deal with earthly challenges and repeated human errors. Living peacefully elsewhere, no matter how brief is a lot to recover from and perhaps more than this being can ace in a lifetime: to come to equanimity about this difference while I am here; before I leave permanently.
That has been my internal work while I am here: come to terms with my out of body experience... so that my frustration is not constantly accentuated by the fact that I know what pain-free is... and pain-free here rarely happens here in the same way as not being in a body and mind on this planet.
I may still fear getting hurt, or sick enough to die, or not having any control about when nor how I suffer or die... but I do not fear where I will go when I die: I am at peace with that. In fact, I look forward to being relieved of my challenges here: they have been too much for me for many years. And even still, I am not eager to go. I am not done here.
I would never sell my death to stay here longer. I am not eager to go now nor soon, mainly because I have yet to be fulfilled in ways I had hoped; and I keep feeling I am nearly matured enough to do what I came here to do; to live an awakened-spirit-driven life and evolve with a planet of humans in a positive way.
But if this challenging life is just going to be more of the same heartbreaking mishaps and struggles... ahhhh well? I might welcome an exit sooner than later just to be done with trying so damn hard to get somewhere or do something.
About Another’s Death.
While I was with my dad in his dying, I felt sadness to know once he left his body... he would not likely come back in the same form, and I would miss him and grieve at times. But I had no fears about being with him while he died.
I got tired and needed breaks during the weeks before he died. But once it was clear he would likely let go soon, I had a sudden surge of energy that helped me be present with him and not feel so fatigued while he passed. I was amazed at how invigorated I felt just being with him beaming love to him.
One aspect that helped me with this is something I learned through the Re-evaluation Co-Counseling training I had many years ago which taught me as a counselor to reflect back a warm welcoming relaxed facial expression of approval along with genuine presence. Showing this presence can often help the person a session discharge distress because a genuine look of approval and direct attention is a contradiction to what we have known or seen... and the pain we hold onto slips away in crying, shaking, raging, laughing, or sweating as an energetic vibrational discharge and perhaps similar with dying: I wanted his experience to be his, not muddled by my concern or fear.
So I faced his fear, discomfort, aggravation, hesitation, and mental confusion about what was happening with an intention to reflect wholeness rather than showing him worry, concern, or getting swallowed up by my own fear.
What made sense to me was to just love him through this time and he would naturally discharge any arising stress and find his own way to peace.
I could not know where his mind would go, but I could offer the trust and faith that he did not seem to have about the process and it all being just fine as it was; as it was happening. I felt able to witness and allow any of his hesitations and resistances to letting go, because I was willing to be with him through uncomfortable time. It seemed to me that the only thing holding him here was his intense need and ability to CONTROL.
I knew none of us could control what was happening. Doctors had already done what we could medically to extend his life. The blood transfusions only helped briefly. And he no longer wanted to have them because it was too much effort to get to the hospital and back.
We could simply be with him and be open to his dying process and do what we could to minimize the pain of his struggle to find exit... or more clearly put: we could simply not hold on so strongly to what we know: preventing us from experiencing something we have never known.
In reflecting on what was keeping him here: he had a very strong adaptable heart. His heart managed to enlarge in order to keep pumping the dwindling remains of his good blood through him. His mind was also strong and he was not familiar with surrendering, so he could not embrace that concept.
My assessment is that he lived his whole life without ever developing trust or faith in any form. It left him feeling unloved on many levels. I think he needed this past year to get that we all loved him dearly. He only counted on himself and his brain, or knowledge... or what he could glean from other sources... until the last year.
He hated being dependent on others. When he gave into our care he was gracious and appreciative but still hated the idea of counting on it or having it or his need continuing.
My counsel for him his last day when he kept asking me,
“Why am I still here?” I lay down next to him on his bed to be close to him and let him know I was right there.
“I do not know Dad, what is holding you back?” I said, “Try using your mind to find the places where you are holding on, even if it is a simple idea... and let it go”.
Letting go was a completely foreign concept to him. It was a muscle he could not find in order to release all he held too tightly .
“We love you dad; you have been an honorable man and a good father”. I leaned towards him, and said softly, “You have our permission to go”.
Then he shared, “I don’t want to do it (die) wrong.”
(He did not want to make a mistake, while exiting.)
“You can not do it wrong, Dad, you can not make a mistake dying.”
“I don’t… I don’t want to end up back in the hospital.’
“Dad, you are safe now. You are on your own comfortable bed in your own room, in your own house. I promise we will stay with you here to keep you safe so you will not end up back in the hospital”.
He returned a grateful reassured calm glad glance and rested.
Later he inquired,
“Why can’t I simply take too many sleeping pills and never wake up?”
I considered whether I could help him with that knowing we had a whole bottle of Trazadol in the house. I just did not know how much it would take, and he was not swallowing things well. And I did not want an attempt to do that, to go badly either, nor did I want our doing that to lead to any other issues. So I told him, “Without knowing what it would take to do that, I can not help you that way. ‘Sorry, Dad.”
When it got dicey later that night and he could not settle down and he could no longer take the pills he had to help him relax without violently retching. His labored breathing escalated and he could not be still nor rest but also had too little energy to move, we had to do our best to lift his floppy weight into a chair, back to the bed, as he insisted half a dozen times, before he understood it would not make a difference, that his dying process included tremendous discomfort and what we could do was too limited.
He had not formed words for many hours yet continued to struggle.
At 10:00 pm, I called Hospice to let them know the medicines they said would be delivered by 9 pm tonight had not been delivered. They said they would bring them tomorrow unless we really needed them. At midnight I called hospice back to see if we could get some support. The Hospice nurse came (what felt like hours later) with some liquid morphine – something I had said we would not need nor want 10 hours earlier.
At 1:30 am the nurse dosed him once expecting it to take effect immediately and we would see his breathing calm. Nothing happened. Fifteen minutes later she dosed him again. Nothing changed.
Fifteen minutes later she got ready to dose him the third time and said under her breath only to me, “I am trying to titrate the dose, not wanting to go over what he could tolerate.”.
And all of the sudden after he made no effort to speak nor use words for over twelve hours, he tipped his head directly toward her and looked right at her with intense seriousness and said quite loudly,
"I am NOT at all concerned with whether I can TOLERATE the medicine!" He was definitely still with us.
Yup... those were my father's last words... the nurse gave him his last dose at 2 am and left after telling us to repeat the dose at 3 am or we might see a violent surge when it wears off. He began to settle down at 2:50 am, so we refrained from giving him anymore.
Just about 2:45 am I could feel the imminent end of his existence as I knew it, and I could no longer hold back my tears – which I had not wanted to trouble him by revealing. Quiet tears came to my eyes blurring my vision of him and he gazed right at me for many minutes while I held his hand. Then he began to slowly soften. We both knew this was it: he was free to go.
There were all sorts of other changes and extreme facial expressions, distortions really, that presented across his face. These were similar to those my daughter did spontaneously in her dream-filled sleep as an infant, in her first month of life, long before she had any life experiences to go with those expressions we see as meaning something. It was as if every emotion he had ever felt flashed across his face in total of about four to five minutes.
I held his hand securely in mine and sang to him intermixed with thorough deep breaths and vocalized sighs that helped remind me of the ease of being and peace we all strive to find. I slowly sang him an African work song, “Sing-go Sahmee… and a gentle Lullaby by Cris Williamson I used to sing to my daughter. He seemed to pass at the point of me singing, "and Angels sing you to sleep..." the second time around.
He took his last gasping breath at 3:19 am. I continued to sit with him holding his hand quietly watching his eyes move rapidly in tiny buzzy circles under his half-closed lids for over twenty minutes.
It was hard to believe he had passed because it seemed he was still there perhaps in a coma-like state. I had listened to his heart with a stethoscope; throughout the evening; it sounded like a seven-year-old randomly whacking on a drum set; a one-man-band set with bells and whistles and boinging sounds, wheezy whistles and things that click and buzz and gurgle, at least seven different sounds that I would not have associated with a heart much less a normal "lub-dupe" heart rhythm.
After his last breath, there was a faint tiny swooshing sound I could hear with the stethoscope that sounded almost electrical... I was not convinced he was gone because the nurse warned he may go into a medical coma.
I had to remind myself over and over that he could not still be alive if he was not breathing at all for more than a few minutes. Yet that is how the last hours had unfolded, many minutes of not breathing and then sudden gasp… many more minutes and a sudden movement of air one way or the other.
I was afraid since we did not give him the 3 am dose that the nurse instructed us to give him, that the medicine might wear off and he may surge out of a coma in a violent contraction and fall out of the bed as depicted in some horror movies. So, I sat there being with him, just loving him and musing on how not-definitive his passing was... it was a smeared line between being here and being gone that repeatedly came and went and then eventually settled.
And as hard as it might be to imagine, it was almost comical that we did not know if he was still alive. Carmen, the night caregiver, had been in the room with us the whole night... and for the past hour or more she was sitting across the dim-lit room just past his feet praying with a string of wooden worry beads, just being an amazing spiritual support to me and my father in his passing.
At 3:40 am she said, in a whisper, "I think he is finally sleeping".
I glanced in her direction in amusement and surprise, and whispered back,
"I think he finally passed... about 20 minutes ago."
To which she got up to find out.
And even as it was clear he was not breathing... it seemed his chest was still moving ever so slightly. Was it a mirage because I naturally expect a person to be breathing? We put our faces up to his mouth to feel breath. None.
I made some phone calls to my family while Carmen sat with him
alone. Maria the daytime caregiver arrived early – around 4:30 am due to Carmen calling her. She sat with him for a while then we spent time sharing and decompressing about our experience and my father and his passing.
I tried to shut his gaping mouth twice, once right after we determined he was not breathing, and again after the caretakers left at 5:30 am. Both times it bounced back to open. I also thought to shut his eyes yet decided to leave them where they were partly open so my family could see him as he died when they arrived the next day.
As weird as it was to try to sleep in the room next to a room in which my dead father lay motionless... I did finally sleep for about an hour and a half.
When I got up to check on him in the early morning light... his eyes were still partly open, just as I had left them... his gaze still fixed, as if on me as I entered his room... and his mouth was gently closed.
To which I said aloud, " Daaaaaaad!”
I was slightly worried we had left him in a mid-state… partially here mostly gone, and while finally alone he had shut his own mouth and finally let go.
