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Where is the Light?
I became a hospice volunteer initially because I wanted to give something back to the angels who helped my mother and my family through one of the most difficult times in our lives. The training included an exercise in which we were led through a guided meditation and asked to imagine you were trapped in the wreckage following a plane crash. Faced with the knowledge that your life force was draining from your body you had 5 minutes to tell a complete stranger all of the things that you wanted your family to know after you were gone. The purpose was to invoke empathy for the patients and their situation. Induction into hospice care occurs when your doctor has certified your prognosis as not longer than six months and a celestial discharge is the only way to be released. It has been my experience that the best way to end a conversation at a party is to announce that you are in anyway affiliated with hospice, the conversation ends and the person wanders off in search of more stimulating companionship. It seems that most people with a pulse are allergic to death.
My primary function was to share Reiki, however even in the year 2001 most people had no idea what Reiki is and the term “healing modality” seemed misplaced in an atmosphere where death was a certainty. Since there were no requests pending for someone with my talents they assigned me to the care center. The care center was on the campus of a large hospital complex, though it was located in a separate building that was not connected physically to the main hospital, as if close proximity might impact the mortality rate. People were assigned to the care center because they either lacked family or the family was unable to care for them utilizing in home hospice assistance.
Of course being full of purpose and ready to change the world I arrived for my first day and was ushered into the room of an old man who was sitting in a chair waiting to die. My job was to engage him in small talk, and while I’m certain that a brief jaunt down memory lane was not a waste of time it only served to remind him all of the people he cared about were gone.
Grateful to escape him and questioning my decision to even be here in this program, I ran into a male nurse looking very harassed and he asked, “Are you the new volunteer?”
“I am.” I responded
“Welcome, I’m Walter*. Do you think you could spend some time with Joseph*? I have so much to do and he is terrified of being alone, he won’t let me out of his sight.” He finally exhaled as if he couldn’t even spare the time to breathe.
I followed him down to the end of the hall all the while dreading more inane conversation. We entered Joseph’s room and the first thing that caught your eye was all of the beautiful artwork taped to the walls. There didn’t appear to be any order to how the items were affixed and most weren’t even straight but hung at an angle as if they had been placed by a child standing on their tip-toes and extending their arm beyond their line of sight. Beneath the wonderful pictures of angels, fairies and rainbows was breath taking poetry and I briefly wondered who the author might be as Walter struggled to turn Joseph in the bed. When I looked at him I was shocked by his youth. This man couldn’t be more than 35 years of age!
Walter made the introductions, “This is Joseph and he has end stage ALS, Lou Gehrig’s disease, he no longer has mobility of any kind and he can’t talk but he can use this chart to ask questions”.
The “chart” was nothing more than a card with the alphabet printed on it and Walter demonstrated its use. “You run your finger along the letters and Joseph will blink when you reach the next letter of the word he is spelling.” He handed me the chart and nearly ran from the room tossing the words, “I’m certain the two of you will be fast friends”, over his shoulder as the door softly closed behind him.
I explained to Joseph what Reiki was and asked if it would be okay if I shared some energy with him? Joseph blinked and taking that to mean yes I proceeded with a treatment. Afterward we attempted to stumble through our first “conversation” using the chart. We didn’t have to get through the entire question before it became clear that Joseph was adept at telepathy. They say when you lose one sense all of the others become sharper, and Joseph had lost virtually everything. I suspect that he was empathic long before his diagnosis. Joseph’s question was “when will I die?”
“Soon”, I responded. “Are you afraid?”
Blink, “yes”.
“I have had some experience with the other side and I can honestly tell you what awaits is amazing and wonderful.” I watched his eyes intently for some sign of agreement, but instead he imperceptibly shook his head, “No”.
It took only a few minutes to learn the best way to communicate was to listen for his mental “transmission” and respond with questions that could be answered with either a yes or a no. The story that unfolded was that prior to his illness Joseph had not led what he called a “good” life and the ALS was “god’s” punishment for his lifestyle. My heart was breaking at the thought of such a beautiful spirit so tortured at the thought of arriving home only to find the door locked and barred. Joseph was the artist and author of all of the amazing works of art that adorned his room. These were created by someone who had great depth and connection not by the person he tried to convince me he had been.
“You know what I found in the Light was infinite love but what struck me the most was the forgiveness. While it’s hard to explain in words, not only do you have the wisdom to forgive yourself but the forgiveness you have for others is the greatest of gifts. The Light accepts everyone and in the Light there is tremendous clarity. You see all of the impacts of your actions, beginning to end. You know the wisdom of the final the outcome that we lack the ability to see or understand while we are in this limiting physical body.” I had tears in my eyes as I gazed into his beautiful brown eyes. He wanted so much to believe me, but the war still raged in the depths of his heart.
Our ability to communicate seemed to come so easily, and there was little need to exchange meaningless conversation. The second visit I noticed a picture of a beautiful young woman taped to the cabinet.
“She is very pretty, is she your daughter?” I looked to him for an acknowledgement.
Blink.
Through a series of questions the story unfolded. When his daughter was born his was in his teens as was the mother. He had been an impermanent fixture in her life. There were cards and presents on her birthday and Christmas. He was young and the situation with the mother had been strained so it was easier to drift away. I asked if she knew he was here and that his time was limited. Blink. I didn’t remember seeing her visit.
Pride is such an interesting emotion and a disease like ALS robs its victims of all vestiges of what most people refer to as pride. Joseph had barred his daughter from coming to see him because he was afraid of seeing the pity in her eyes. He didn’t want her to remember him this way.
“Do you mind if I share a story with you?” Blink.
“My natural father died when I was five years old. I know I would have given anything to see him one last time, just to know I mattered enough to him to want my face to be the last thing he saw when he left this world. I wouldn’t care what condition he was in if I could just hold his hand for a minute. I would have at least had closure.”
Joseph and I had three weeks together before he finally took his leave shortly after Thanksgiving. I heard from Walter that Joseph’s daughter was at his side in the hours before his passing. Hers was the last face he saw before his eyes closed in death.
When I arrived at the care center after Joseph’s crossing I asked the charge nurse if I could spend time with the patients who were truly “end stage”. In other words they had lapsed into a the final coma that proceeds their exit point. She pointed across the hall to a room.
“Mrs. Johnson* has been talking to her parents.” She leaned toward me and whispered “they’re dead.”
“I figured.” I responded.
I entered the room and said hello to Mrs. Johnson’s parents, hanging out in the corner, and prepared to do the “Bridge of Light.” The Bridge of Light serves to connect people to the Light so they can release whatever it is that holds them here. Metaphorically speaking it allows them to release their grip on one handrail and transfers their grasping hands to another handrail.
As I performed the Bridge of Light ceremony with Mrs. Johnson’s family looking on, I couldn’t keep my mind from wandering back to a day five years earlier.
My mother’s amazing hospice nurse, Jean, had come to check on my mother, surprised she still lingered. She asked if I could step out on the front porch with her.
“Your mother has gone far beyond what the physical body is normally capable of; she has been in a coma without food and water for more than a week. You have got to get your father to let her go. He is the one she is hanging on for; he has got to give her permission to leave.” Well the elephant was finally out of the closet and smack in the middle of the room. We had all said our good-bye’s with one exception.
People hang onto this life for two basic reasons, fear of the unknown and those who remain behind. Needless to say my mother drew her last breath within five minutes of my father’s goodbye.
Within two weeks of Mrs. Johnson’s passing I arrived at the care center to find a list already waiting with the names of patients the various nurses requested I “visit”. They didn’t really understand what I was doing; they just knew that patients were making a swift and peaceful departure soon after my visit. So swift, in some cases, that for a period of time someone was assigned to “observe” me during my time on the floor just to clear up any lingering suspicion I may have been putting a pillow over the patients faces in an effort to hasten their departure. One of the nurses told me some of them had begun referring to me as “Andrew”. Andrew was the Angel of Death on the television show Touched by an Angel that was popular at the time.
To quell any more talk that I might be doing something physically to speed the exit of patients; I started telling the comatose folks that I would prefer that they delayed their exit until after I had left the building. Not that I would slam a door if they attempted to leave it was just a request that they were free to honor or not as the circumstances dictated.
One gentleman who really stuck out in my mind had cancer and his room number was on my list. I entered his room and shared the “I prefer that you exit after I leave” speech before starting the Bridge of Light. I completed the ceremony and was picking up my things to leave the room when he climbed out of his body. He didn’t look like your “normal” spirit transitioning to the other side. He was a like a white shadow of his physical body.
“Are you an angel?” he asked.
“Uh, no.”, I responded, pretty dumbfounded to be talking to a shadow. “But appreciate the thought.”
“So, where do I go now?” he inquired very matter of fact as if he was asking directions to the grocery store.
“Don’t you see any other angels in the room?” I was never in this situation before so I had no idea what to tell him.
“Nope, just you.” This guy was amazingly calm considering the situation.
“Then I would say it’s not your time yet, you need to get back into your body until they come for you.” That sounded like a pretty lame solution, but I didn’t know what else to tell him, I really didn’t want to take him home with me.
I examined his body lying in the bed and turned back to the shadow and asked, “So is he still breathing?” I pointed to the bed as if we were talking about a third person in the room.
The shadow leaned over the bed and after a cursory examination straightened up and responded, “Appears to be.”
“Maybe you want to stop that” I said. There was nothing else to do but take him with me to the next room as it didn’t appear he was open to getting back into his body.
“Well, come with me for now, maybe you can catch a ride in the next room.” “Could my life be any more bizarre?” I thought, as we went out the door and down the hall.
I repeated the Bridge of Light for the woman in the next room and after I was finished I saw my shadow was still in attendance.
“See anything familiar?” I asked “Any lights, angels, departed love ones?” Hope sprang up in my heart only to be dashed.
“Nope, nothing.” I could just imagine if he had pockets his hands would have been in them.
“I don’t know what to tell you, it just must not be your time. My shift is over and I have to leave and as I am sure you know you can’t come with me. Maybe you can wander the halls until someone else leaves and ask for directions.” I was beginning to display frustration at this impossible situation.
He followed me to the front door of the care center and I was growing nervous that maybe he could follow me all the way home, but thankfully he was prevented from moving beyond the confines of the building. I learned at my next visit he crossed three days later, so he apparently found the door.
Six months after I started at the care center I was called into the office. The volunteer committee felt that to expand my hospice experience it was time for me to leave the care center environment and go out into the field to work with in-home hospice clients. And for a few months several different patients and their families passed through my life or I passed through theirs depending on your perspective. Finally a request came into the office for someone who was trained in Reiki. I happily accepted the assignment and the following Tuesday I showed up at the appointed time and met Jenny*, a woman who would be the most meaningful person in my time with hospice and also my last.
Jenny answered the door herself on that day in late summer of 2001. She was a beautiful, petite woman in her early fifties with short cropped hair that framed her fairy-like face. Jenny didn’t have cancer; she had a benign forty pound tumor attached to her liver that was slowing draining the life force from her body. She may have weighed all of 85 pounds when she was healthy so a tumor of this size caused her to walk bent over to accommodate the additional weight. Jenny didn’t have any use for the medical community and in the four months we spent together much of her life story became the topic of conversation. She had actually healed the tumor once before and was in remission for 18 months before it returned and grew to its present size. Jenny had requested a healing arts professional and a hypnotherapist to help her deal with the pain of dying because she refused all pain medications. She wanted her progression into the afterlife to be a conscious one unmarred by anything that might alter her experience.
The slow painful death of a loved one is not something that just happens to the person who is dying; it is a shared experience that affects the entire network of family and friends. They all suffer through the dying process in one way or another and are forever changed by the experience. Jenny had a grown son and daughter and the love of her life, a high school sweetheart with whom she had reconnected with at a high school reunion while she was in remission. Her husband had preceded her in death from a brain aneurysm and she held the belief it was brought on by a long time addiction to cocaine. Jenny’s son was estranged from his mother for two reasons, one that she wouldn’t accept surgical intervention that would have allowed her the opportunity to live a long life and two; he blamed her for the death of his father. People believe what they believe; it’s neither right nor wrong it just is a culmination of their need to control outcomes in a way that allows them to reconcile what cannot be understood.
My time with Jenny was very nearly cut short by an act of ego. I was called into the office for a one of the most unpleasant talks of my life and every fiber of my being wanted to run away and give up. I had violated the first rule of hospice care, “Don’t blame the patient for their illness”. During the conversation with Jenny about healing her tumor previously, I had asked a simple question, “so why didn’t you elect to heal it this time?” I told her that if she made a choice to live I would be happy to help her with the healing. I had suddenly made her illness about me and not her and while I regret having caused her pain more than words can say I know that everything happens for a reason; living and dying is all about the learning. The whole premise of hospice care is to alleviate the mental and emotional pain and physical suffering that accompanies the death process and allow for the most positive experience possible under the circumstances.
My comments made it back to her family who immediately placed a call to Jenny’s nurse. There were meetings and drama and I know the hospice organization would have happily bounced me out the door and down the street; I would have helped them actually. Jenny had intervened and asked I be allowed to continue working with her. Knowing I had to see this through to the end I returned to work with Jenny for two more months.
Jenny’s condition continued to deteriorate and she suffered through tremendous pain but the “problem” with being young and healthy prior to her illness is that her heart was strong and could sustain life far longer than that of an older person. By the first of November Jenny could no longer negotiate the stairs and by mid-November she lacked the ability to get out of bed. We began doing the Bridge of Light in November hoping to strengthen her connection to the Light and end the cycle of pain. My heart ached for her each time I would come and she would stretch out her emaciated hand to grasp mine and say “Melissa where is the Light, I can’t see the Light.” I would say a silent prayer asking the Light to welcome her home. I would call before every visit to get an update on her condition hoping against hope my services would not be required.
I arrived the first week in December to find Jenny’s daughter Amy* and a college friend sitting in their pajamas on the front porch with a baby monitor between them on the table. The presence of the baby monitor was a reminder that Jenny was upstairs but she had lapsed into the final coma so the chances of actually “hearing” any noise coming from her room was remote. Amy asked if she could talk with me before I went up to see her mother.
“Melissa I don’t care what you have to do but this has to end. I can’t take one more day, one more hour, one more minute of this.” Amy had tears streaming down her face that she no longer bothered to wipe away. Amy had just released her mother.
I entered Jenny’s room and sat down in a chair next to the bed. The sounds of her sister cleaning down the hall broke the silence. I sat for a few minutes but felt no need or desire to begin the Bridge of Light and it took another minute to understand why. There was no presence in the room, I observed Jenny for a while and she was not breathing. She was waiting for her daughter’s permission to leave and once she had that, she wasted no time making her exit as she had apparently passed while we were talking on the porch.
I continued to sit quietly, knowing I should go downstairs and tell Amy about her mothers passing, but instead I closed my eyes to say a prayer of thanks, when someone tapped me on the shoulder. I thought I must have been so deep in meditation I didn’t hear someone come into the room. When I turned to acknowledge the person who was behind me a huge burst of light blinded me and the words “I AM the LIGHT!” drifted to my ears. And then she was gone.
People always ask why it is that some people elect to die a slow painful death. As someone who can connect with people on the other side I can tell you that people who go through this type of death process are more difficult to connect with as an individual. In other words they have merged with the Light and have released their need to hold onto the person (individual) that they were in this life. There is something that occurs in that final coma when souls are suspended between heaven and earth. They go through an unwinding process in which they can fully reconcile all of their life lessons including past lives that allows them to move beyond the need to remain a “self aware individual” and become a part of the greater consciousness we call Source energy. An integral part of that process is the release by those who have a need to keep them locked in the cycle if individuality.
Do I recommend everyone run out and have a prolonged painful death experience so their soul can fully evolve? Absolutely not! Our family, friends and loved ones already did that that so we don’t have to! We can gain a greater understanding from their path in order to become more conscious that we have a choice. We can release our need to hold onto our individuality as a statement of our own self importance. We are beginning to understand the interconnectedness of all that occurs in the Universe and the need to hold an individual vibration is like being at an out of control rock concert where every member of the band is playing a different song. Imagine a beautiful symphony where you melt into and become the music. Our collective lessons are the notes that become the harmonious melody rather than millions of souls honking their single horns trying to assert dominance in the cosmic concert hall. We are not quite there yet but we are learning, for in the Light we are all Love.