If You Feel Distant or Estranged from Anyone You Care About, Try This "Deathbed Experience."Death. There you were, perhaps checking through your emails, perhaps enjoying a cup of coffee or tea, and here I am, bringing up death. If even the word makes you a bit edgy, if you’d rather think about anything at all including taxes or cleaning the bathroom, you are not alone. In the Western world today, death has become THE taboo topic. We don’t want to consider it, especially as it relates to our loved ones and our selves. We hide the fact of death away in contemporary society. In Hollywood films, people get shot up and blown up constantly, but the films rarely delve into the actual dying process … the impact on the person, where they go mentally and emotionally, the impact on their loved ones. Whereas in previous ages it was a much more open affair, our dying is hidden away behind hospital walls, hospice walls, bedroom walls. And those close to the dying speak in only the most general and polite of terms to outside acquaintances about it.
LISTEN TO HER WHISPER… Death is, in fact, the absolute best and most important teacher you will ever have in life. That is worth writing down and posting up wherever you will routinely see it. Because, unlike anything else, death reminds us we ARE only here for a limited time. Death will happen to me, it will happen to you, it will happen to those you love, and we don’t know when. Embrace death as a perhaps sometimes intimidating but faithful-as-it-gets friend and listen to her whisper… “Live that life. Live it deeply. Say what you mean to say. Do what you are meant to do. Don’t let the fear, the worry, the guilt, the distractions, nor the setbacks stop you. Because you absolutely know two things: You are alive. And I am here.” Let death remind you of that routinely, and more effectively than anything else you know, it will keep you on the path to what matters. To the who you really are. WHO DO YOU CARE FOR BUT FEEL DISTANT FROM? Ask yourself that question. I have yet to meet anyone who, when they considered it deeply, couldn’t think of at least one person that fits this description: You care for them a lot. In one way or another, you love them. Even if there were wrongs between you in the past, deep down you truly want the best for them.But… There are walls between you and this person. Whatever history those walls may be made of, they prevent you from communicating to this person what you feel. They may prevent you from asking questions you have of this person. They may prevent you from revealing things to this person that should be revealed. These perceived walls stifle you from connecting with this person that, at some deep level, you wish you could connect to and communicate with. Here is where death and her sweet whispered reminder come in. What if you learned this person you care for but feel distant from was on his or her deathbed? Don’t run from the thought, don’t categorize it as “morbid,” as those are mere convenient contemporary excuses for not confronting what can truly free our minds and spirits and improve our lives. Instead, visualize it. After reading this, close your eyes if you want and see them there on the bed. Experience your feelings as you approach them … Nervous? Sad? Experience their reaction as you approach … Confused? Delighted? Full of tears? Firm? Seeing them, your intuition tells you this is it, death will soon be taking them. This will be your last time with them. Your last time to communicate to them. What do you say? What do you ask? What do you tell? You may want to pull back, those imagined walls can be big, but you know you will never be able to approach them as such again. So visualize yourself pushing through. Know that, if not communicating what needs to be communicated has weighed on your mind and heart for years or decades, it has weighed on theirs, too. Such intention and energy is never a one-way street. Know that you are therefore lifting a weight off of them, too. Freeing the love. Hear what you would say. Say it aloud; that helps make the experience even more real. Visualize touching or hugging or holding them if that is what you’d do. And then finally, and most important, see yourself having to leave them there on the bed. Visualize and feel yourself having to go. Are you sure, as you are heading away, you have asked and told them everything you need to? That they need to? Did you intend to hug and hold them but didn’t … and therefore should? And then you are gone. In your car, perhaps, or walking away. Likely in tears – this inevitable departure is inevitably sad – but also at least at some peace. All the more so knowing they, too, had at least some of the weight lifted off. They know how much you care. In reality, we are often not given the benefit of such a meeting with those we care for but feel distant from. Death can surprise, or it can hint and suggest, but it never gives a firm date and time. And even if we do have the benefit of such a meeting, whether it is they or us on the deathbed, it is too late for so much. Why live another day in the cold shadows of those false walls between you and those you care who you feel distant from? Even if you don’t recognize it every day, those cold shadows stifle you every day. More than the exercise you didn’t get, or the bad food that you ate, those cold shadows stifle your energy, your freedom, your ability to get the things done that you need to get done to be successful, however you define that. “Live that life. Live it deeply. Say what you mean to say. Do what you are meant to do. Don’t let the fear, the worry, the guilt, the distractions, nor the setbacks stop you. Because you absolutely know two things: You are alive. And I am here.” Whoever that person was that you visualized on their deathbed, whoever that person was that you opened those walls holding so much back to, go to them. In person, in a letter, via email, on the phone … however you can, as soon as you can, go to them. And have that deathbed conversation with them now. So you both can live – really, really live – that much more.
|
