joy of Ageing Esoterically

Personal sharings

30/6/2018

Many families refuse to accept that their elderly relatives will ever die and hence are not open to having the discussion. This leaves many elderly people feeling alone, not listened to, and frightened. As death is inevitable for everyone, why is it a topic that most people shy away from discussing?

Surely it is time to face up to what is inevitable for us all and to start the conversation around death and dying so that it eventually becomes a normal topic of conversation. Once this occurs dying can become something we plan for and accept with grace and love.

By sharing each other’s personal stories around death and dying we can start to open up the conversation and perhaps start to view the dying process in a different way.

As Jane says in her article “What if we truly, joyfully celebrated with those who were due to pass over with loving words and a true light-ness and playfulness? Celebrating their life and honouring them in death?”
If you are ready to be part of the conversation please read on as our writers share their experience

DEATH AND DYING - THE CYCLE OF LIFE AND DEATH

29/6/2018

I have often avoided the thought of dying. There are so many beliefs of how one should approach the subject. I had always seen death and dying to be full of doom, gloom and drama, which is perhaps why I had previously avoided being around anybody who was close to dying. The experience I had recently with my dear friend, who was terminally ill and dying, was quite revolutionary for me.

PASSING OVER AT HOME

30/5/2018

It is now almost 14 years since my husband passed over. He was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain tumour after demonstrating symptoms somewhat similar to dementia. However our very understanding physician who knew the patient and suspected the truth, immediately ordered various brain investigations which identified the condition as being glioblastoma.

FUNERALS ARE FOR THE LIVING

29/4/2018

Funerals have long been part of how we say goodbye to someone we love. Just about every depiction movies make of funerals has mourners in black, standing by a grave, often in the rain, surrounded by headstones and overlooked by trees with a man in robes reading aloud: “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…” It is far from the reality of how funerals really are today.

LAST MOMENTS – APPRECIATION AND COMPLETION

30/3/2018

On 19th July, 2016, I was present when my ex-husband, Henry passed over, ten years after being diagnosed with prostate cancer. Our marriage of fifty years was not a joyful event or a ‘match made in Heaven’, but we both, as most marriages of that time, were ascribing to the vow “Till death us do part”. We were both born during the Second World War.

CARING WITHOUT IMPOSING

27/2/2018

I recently travelled to Australia to be in a new relationship and after five months we bought a house in an area we liked and started to get to know the local community and what shops to go to get whatever we needed. We registered for the local doctors surgery and notified all the official places of our new address. Within a month of our being in the new house, my partner was admitted to hospital.

FUNERAL ARRANGEMENTS – PLANNING AHEAD.

30/1/2018

We are all going to die yet talking about dying is for many people a subject to be avoided. I know of a family whose elderly mother had been in a nursing home for over ten years. When she passed away in her late 90’s with no plans or funds in place for her funeral, there was ‘suddenly’ a dilemma of how the costs were going to be paid.

DEATH – WHAT TO EXPECT?

31/12/2017

There is a famous book on pregnancy and birth that explores what to expect when you are expecting. It details the unfolding physical and emotional landscape that comes with pregnancy and birth. Somehow dying, the other half of the cycle of birth and death, is buried under our social and medical focus on extending life instead of including and welcoming death as equally as we do birth.

FEELING THE TRUTH BEHIND DYING AND DEATH!

30/12/2017

Growing up there was a funeral protocol program that everyone followed in my town and it was basically because of the organised religions, mine being of the catholic doctrine, and community reflections. Before I came into my awareness of all that has played out in my life especially around the death of a family member, or anyone’s death for that matter, all deaths had the same funeral protocol.

DEATH – SOMETHING WORTH PREPARING FOR

30/11/2017

Preparing for death does not require an understanding of the after life or even a belief in it, although this certainly adds more purpose to the way we approach living and dying. Just the fact that death is the only universal guarantee we all share is reason enough to consider planning for it. Birth, school, work, marriage, family and retirement are all planned for but why not death?

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All written content copyright © 2016 Anne McRitchie, Rowena Parkes and all Authors as mentioned.
Photos copyright © by the photographers: Alan Johnston, Clayton Lloyd, Dean Whitling, Desiree Delaloye, Iris Pohl, Steffi Henn, Steve Leca ,
Shannon Everest, Matt Paul, Gayle Cue

Personal sharings

DEATH AND DYING - THE CYCLE OF LIFE AND DEATH

PASSING OVER AT HOME

FUNERALS ARE FOR THE LIVING

LAST MOMENTS – APPRECIATION AND COMPLETION

CARING WITHOUT IMPOSING

FUNERAL ARRANGEMENTS – PLANNING AHEAD.

DEATH – WHAT TO EXPECT?

FEELING THE TRUTH BEHIND DYING AND DEATH!

DEATH – SOMETHING WORTH PREPARING FOR

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