of the processes of death. As the organs fail, the senses shut down and the mind-body connection ends. At the moment of death the elements out of which the body is made are said to dissolve into each other: earth into water, water into fire, fire into wind and wind into consciousness or pure ether.
Air is the element of the mind and as that begins to dissolve it feels as though the whole world is swept away by a great wind as it expands into consciousness and all inner energies gather in the heart in the moments before the end of physical life. There are three final breaths as the three drops of blood collect in the ‘channel of life’ at the centre of the heart. Then silence. At this moment an atmosphere of profound peace descends in the room.
For spiritual practitioners this is the moment of liberation of the spirit from the confines of the body. The Tibetans talk of the consciousness flying out of the crown of the head, sometimes with such force that a fragment of bone in the skull is displaced. The Native American describes death as though the body were an old coat which simply falls away to reveal the naked soul underneath. The Sadhus (Hindi holymen) will discard the body when it has lost its ability as a vehicle for enlightenment with no emotion at all. It has become a burden to their onward journey, so they are able to arrest the functions of the body and journey in one seamless movement from life into death. Certain Himalayan yogis will simply go and sit outside, enter a state of deep meditation and allow their body to freeze around them.
There’s no real training for a soul midwife other than just doing it. I know that there are hundreds of people, men and women, who have dealt with just one death as a soul midwife. They were just there at the right time and were capable and moved to say and do the right thing.
Clare Proust
Emma Restall Orr, a Druid priestess and poet, explains that in the mystical tradition of Druidry the adept hopes to reach a state of ecstasy – a profound communion with the divine – at the moment of death. This moment of ecstatic union is said to cleanse the psyche of all the events, hopes and fears of the last life so that the lessons and emotions are not continued into the next. At the point of death you call out the name of your God. In Hindu tradition the aim at death is the same: to consciously give yourself over to the divine. When Gandhi was assassinated his last words were, ‘Ram, Ram’ (God, God), which according to Hindu belief ensures his soul’s place above the trials of rebirth.
BRIDGE OF FAITH
Helena was not a spiritual person at all, although her husband Patrick has ‘enormous, unshakeable faith’ in Catholicism. She was diagnosed with cancer in January, just before she gave birth to twin boys. She was 28 and she had two other sons, a five year old and a three year old. Julia, her sister-in-law and an expert in palliative care, had helped many people cope with the fear of dying but the acute suffering of someone she loved was unbearable. ‘In the middle of the night she would come down to the kitchen and scream at me: “Please don’t let me die, please don’t let me die. I’ve got four tiny babies. Please don’t let me die.” And there was nothing I could do to save her.’
Despite his desperate sadness Patrick accepted Helena’s pending death from the moment of her diagnosis; he felt that they had been given this ‘cross to carry’ for a reason to which they were currently blind. He cared for her at home and sustained her during her darkest moments. He did not try to hide the truth of her sickness from himself or her and encouraged openness with the children. And he prayed and prayed that she might get better.
In the course of her illness Helena underwent an extraordinary transformation which began when Julia took her to Lourdes, which is renowned as a place of profound spiritual healing. Helena’s transformation was dramatic. Suddenly she became more peaceful. She had resolved something in her mind. The fear had gone.
Father Edward, the priest who had married the couple and who would eventually convert and finally bury Helena, describes her as being bestowed by the ‘grace of faith’. None of her friends could believe the sense of peace which she carried with her until her death.
In September Cardinal Hume said he would say a Novena for her. A Novena is nine days of prayer for a specific intention. On the first night Cardinal Hume held a mass in the crypt at Westminster cathedral with all the family’s closest friends and relatives, many of whom had never prayed before, and they prayed that Helena might get well. Then, each day for nine days, all of them repeated the prayer for a miracle.
Helena was amazed that so many people were praying for her and her faith, grace and peace grew day by day, even though she was getting sicker and sicker. When she came to the cathedral for the final prayer of the Novena she could just about walk from the car to the crypt, where she stood surrounded by all her friends and family praying for one last time. Hume anointed Helena with oil on her forehead and on her hands, a rite which is healing as well as bringing to the recipient the special graces that Jesus brought to the sick as he moved among them, healing and touching them.
Helena died in November, three weeks after converting to Catholicism. She died while Patrick was holding her hand and they were saying a rosary together, at the very moment of saying, ‘Help us now on the day of our death...’ Patrick still remembers her death as the most powerful moment of his life. At her funeral he asked everyone not to mourn her memory but to close their eyes and feel her presence as he had done at the moment of her death.
Despite the catastrophe of his wife’s death and having four young boys to look after, Patrick’s faith never wavered. He had grieved so much with Helena when she was alive that he was able to return to his life quite smoothly. Some months later a friend suggested that her cousin come to help him with the children. ‘She is very together and very loving,’ she said, ‘and she adores children.’ She moved in in January and Patrick married her in May. The kids adore her and every Sunday when they light a candle and say their prayers they say one for their mother in heaven and one for their mother on Earth.
St Augustine said that prayer was when heart speaks to heart and during all those weeks of prayer Helena’s heart opened wide to the body of faith which helped her to leave this life in a state of grace and peace. No doubt she is watching over her family.
Simon Barrington Ward, former Bishop of Coventry, describes the ideal death as perfect surrender. It is, he says, the ultimate healing when we can leave all our pain and limitation behind. As he traces the cross with oil on the foreheads of the dying he is performing a final rite of blessing, healing and grace as they hand themselves over to God. When he visits the dying he describes to them the idea of giving themselves up to a wave or stream of love which will envelop the soul on death. He invokes a God who is walking through the valley of pain and despair with them, ready to gather them to Him despite all their sins or failings.
Mother Theresa saw the face of Jesus on the poorest of the poor whom she rescued every day for more than 20 years from dying in the streets of Calcutta. She believed that to minister to the dying was to minister to Christ on the cross. This belief is uniformly shared by the nuns who move around her home for the dying silently and efficiently, washing those unable to wash themselves, massaging the legs of those unable to walk, comforting those who by tomorrow will be dead. She taught them to see in their suffering the suffering of Christ.
Although the Missionaries of Charity do not claim an explicit mission to deliver the souls of the dying to Christ, Mother Theresa has probably helped thousands of them move on to eternity thanks to the tender care and gentle faith of her nuns. They bring a dignity and calm to a death which otherwise would be agitated and painful.
The dying often choose to go through the gateway alone. Children and the old especially seem to find it easier to let go when they are not in the presence of the people who love them. The family may feel terrible that they were not at their side, but usually the dying do choose their moment of death.
Death is the ending of one phase of consciousness. It is only a process whereby we have to hand ourselves over to something bigger than ourselves. We have to be willing to die to our own selves so that we can grow into the next phase of consciousness. This is a process which goes on all our lives. Every step of trust and surrender where we give ourselves over to something bigger than us – love, children or compassion