joy of Ageing Esoterically

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?

MY MUM’S FUNERAL: CELEBRATION OF A LIFE COMPLETED

29/11/2017

I recently had a very different day at my mum’s funeral. The day was a new experience for me as we made the funeral all about a celebration of her life. In fact, in many ways it was one of the most beautiful days I have had in a while. My experience of funerals in previous years was not the same as this as I always found funerals overwhelmingly sad and intense occasions where I felt very uncomfortable and unsettled.

THE PASSING OF MY FATHER– A LETTER TO FRIENDS

31/10/2017

Dear Friends,
Last night dad – Ian, surrendered his physical being on this plane of life. While it was twenty-four hours in the lead-up plus the ten months prior, his last breaths were light and gentle. With our hands on his head and heart, shoulder and arm my sister Jenny and I could feel the peacefulness in his body.

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