A Year to Live - How would that be?

A few nights ago our monthly book group discussed the book, A Year to Live by Stephen Levine. It had been my recommendation last month, I think, and another member heartily endorsed it as she had read it already. We agreed that it would be an interesting book for discussion. Within a week, I got rumblings from book group members that they weren’t finding it easy to read. Also, soon after that meeting, one of the group members found out that she was once again needing treatment for a recurrent serious health issue. While we all had a great time visiting and enjoying the wine and goodies provided by our hostess, it was a tough discussion. We each seemed to be distracted in our own way. THIS IS A DIFFICULT SUBJECT – this death/dying thing… I felt somewhat defensive about the book. Agreed, it was hard to read, not just because of the subject, but his treatment of the material and his “words” seemed rather dated given that Levine, a 30-year practitioner of western Buddhism, wrote the book over 10 years ago while training people to help support others through the dying process. It ended up that we had an interesting frank albeit somewhat uncomfortable discussion of our responses to the book.

That night I had a dream that I was with two other friends and we were having a sleep-over that ended up being a very late night discussion about the many ups and downs of life and our concern for our friend who is dealing with the health issue. In this dream, I go to the bathroom and find my mother, who died 14 years ago, in a dry bathtub, fully clothed. Surprised, I apologized for keeping her awake with our late-night discussion. We talked while she remained laying in the tub. She was so very supportive, more so than I remember... as she was often tapped out by our large family. The gist of our talk was that she assured me that everything would be okay.

I woke up during the night with that dream vivid in my mind and realized that it was a good dream all around. How special it was to have an extremely rare meeting with my mother, and the result of our talk left me reassured about my friend. I wanted to share this experience with others. Let’s face it… the subject of death and dying is up for us… not necessarily at this moment, but sooner or later. Whether it is the inevitability of our own, family members, friends.... we will deal with this many times. Perhaps we can be more supportive and compassionate with ourselves and others so that we may more fully enjoy our lives and to accept that this is the natural process.
Matilda