Many people wrote me yesterday to ask details about the Death Class. Several requests for evening led me to schedule it for Thursdays starting March 7 – April 11, 2013 from 6:15 – 7:45 pm Pacific time. Click HERE to register for it.
I am also having fun calling it the Death Class (and don’t worry, we will talk about Pain and Sickness as well!). But it sure makes me laugh to say that I’m teaching a Death Class.
Bringing humor to death and dying has been something we humans have brought to existence throughout the ages, especially since writing, books, theater and poetry.
Maybe even cave men joked around about death. Ug and Thug pretending they fell off a cliff or got gored by a rhino, rolling around laughing.
We will all say that Death and Dying are so serious….and yet, it’s quite amazing to find that often, there are sparks of laughter in the middle of the “end” of someone’s life.
Many years ago, my father was at the end of his. His four daughters, and all of our boyfriends or new husbands at the time, my mother, and my father’s best friend, had all been keeping vigil in my parent’s bedroom for several days.
The last round of chemo in the hospital had come to an end. There was no other possible treatment. It was over. They had sent my father home to die.
My childhood house was filled with people bringing over food. A priest came and gathered for awhile with my sisters and I in our parent’s home, where we all had grown up.
One of my father’s dearest friends called him from Africa. Another flew from across the country to visit my dad for 2 hours, dressed in a business suit, and then returned to the airport to fly away again.
And then came the actual Last Day of my father’s life on the planet.
The people he really loved and cherished were all surrounding him. My mother shared photo albums from their wedding, everyone was in their (fortunately) very large bedroom sitting in chairs, lying on the floor, lying on my parents big bed.
We sang lullabies as we listened to my father breathe. He lay on a special hospital-type bed. The day was a very dark November afternoon with drizzling gray skies outside.
All afternoon we talked in hushed voices about all kinds of things, stretched our stiff necks, went to the bathroom, or would go sit by my father’s bed. Maybe someone would cry softly and we would sit with our arms around each other for a minute.
As all the light faded and darkness came, someone lit more candles. The door opened and closed and people placed a tray of sandwiches on my parent’s dresser.
And then the breathing stopped.
Suddenly, everyone sat up on alert. Everyone who was more than 2 feet away came to my father’s side. We all gathered close and touched him, his shoulders, arms, legs, feet.
We looked at each other, holding our own breath. My mother uttered a cry of great grief. We all began to weep.
And then my father took another breath.
Every single person in that room suddenly burst out laughing. There were no words, there were tears and laughing, and laughing….
And then listening, and waiting, and a long, long pause…
All the laughter fading to a hush, and then listening, and silence, silence.
And then we all knew, simultaneously, that really WAS the last breath, that last one.
And THEN the tears flowed and everyone sobbed. My forehead was resting on my father’s arm and I was holding his hand with my own, and I felt it grow cold. As I cried, I was amazed with this recognition of something I had heard about, the body having no more heat.
And strangely, that laughter did not feel very different from the grief that poured out. At all.
All of it felt like the truth, like love.
“The Tao is like the Great Mother: empty yet inexhaustible, it gives birth to infinite worlds. It is always present within you. You can use it any way you want.”~Tao Te Ching #6
We’re all in the Death Class. Amazing and Beautiful, containing the funniest and the most serious of it all.
Love, Grace
Click here to register for the Pain, Sickness and Death Class!
- Earning Money: What’s Your Problem? Questioning Your Beliefs About Money, Work and Business. Mondays, February 4-April 1, 2013, 7:30 – 9:00 am Pacific time. 8 weeks $395. No class March 4th.
- Pain, Sickness and Death: Making Friends With The Worst That Happens In Life. Thursdays, March 7 – April 11, 2013. 6:15 – 7:45 pm. 6 weeks $295.
- Turning Relationship Hell To Heaven: Working With Painful Hate, Anger, Fury, Despair, Grief, or Disappointment With Someone You Know; Spouse, Mother, Sibling, Father, Daughter, Son, Boss, Neighbor, Friend. Fridays, March 29-May 17, 2013 8:00 am – 9:30 am Pacific time. 8 weeks $395.