"She has been dieing for five years!", someone said of a friend of a friend. What's that all about? How can someone be dieing for five years? Until recently I would not have been able to imagine how someone could be locked in the mode of dieing for that long. How does that work? What goes on inside them? Is it not a waste to linger like that? If you need to go get on with it, if you want to stay, start living to whatever extent your illness or disability allows.

I have learned that dieing is not that simple. It requires a total detachment from this world. This detachment can come at the end of a struggle with a terminal illness, during the last moments in frigid waters after a shipwreck, or on the side of Mount Everest in a blizzard when it becomes clear that help will not arrive before the cold of night overtakes you. Regardless of how swift or how drawn out the process dieing is all about letting go of this life stream and all that occupies it.   

Dieing usually seems to commence when we have a feeling that our days are numbered. When a diagnosis or a careful assessment of the situation reveals that there is nothing more that can be done to sustain life. It is usually at that point that the processes of letting go begins. In a car crash the whole process can be completed in only seconds. With some people who have cancer it can take years. It also varies from person to person. There are countless stories of people in impossibly hopeless situations at sea fighting on and being rescued to live out their lives while others abandon hope much earlier and start the process of detachment almost immediately upon being struck by disaster.   

Our surroundings and the influence of others can play a major role in this process. Often people struggle longer because some loved one(s) can not bear to see them go. There are many cases where a person on their death bed has held on until one last visit from an estranged son or daughter or a final farewell from a close friend. These are clear and obvious detachments. Most are much more subtle. The subtle detachments are often misunderstood as memory lapses or laziness. When in fact they are part of the process of letting go of our connection with this world.   

Last night mother did not remember who Saci and Annette were and that she loved them and gave them lots of treatments. She has no interest in her books downstairs, or her many videos. The television and computer hold no draw for her and in general all sorts of things that occupied her attention in the past are fading into the background. Mother's world is shrinking. More and more the things that she holds on to are immediate. That is why consequentialism has all but disappeared from her life. Recognizing consequences of her actions is just another form of attachment. Attachment from the past to the future; what I did yesterday will have this effect on me tomorrow.   

For those of us still very passionately alive it is hard to comprehend how such cherished activities can become so neglected. The effort that's required to continue to partake in them seems trite compared to the effort that it has taken in the past. We often can not understand why the person has lost all interest until we realize that some people start to die before they get the word from the doctor. For some people it goes on for years, this detachment, but it may be very selective. As long as we still hold on to control of even the simplest acts and events in our lives we are not ready to leave this earth. Death does not reach us until our detachment becomes complete. Some of us require of ourselves that we suffer a huge amount of pain and anguish before we are ready to take that step, some of us will let go sooner. In any case it is a very personal journey and each of us must travel that path on our own.   

Birgit spent the whole day with us yesterday and brought her love to share with mother. They went to Roche for lunch and it gave me a wonderful opportunity to tighten up my workshop a little more and fix our mailbox. After good discussion and learning in the afternoon and a wonderful dinner we went with Birgit to the ferry to see her off. Mother was in pain but wanted to go nonetheless and insisted on driving with Birgit so they could spend a little more time together. She sat in her wheelchair and waved her little heart out as Birgit drove onto the ferry. It was a joy to witness the love between these two souls. Last night we had a good sleep. Moving up to seven doses of meds each day may be what is making the difference. Keeping the medication up also provides mother periods of confidence where she wants to be independent and attempts to walk on her own. Alas these periods seldom last more than an hour or so before she again realizes the seriousness of her condition.  

On a beam of light
Thomas