Daily Kos: How She Died

She lay for some weeks at home, with my step-father by her side while my sister ? who lived in town with her ? handled the daily tasks of care. I came up and sat with her as often as I could. She was weak, and getting weaker, but she was still alert, and still had that steel core of old Southern ladies. Then her body started making its final preparations for death, and slowly shut her down until she slipped into silence -- what the nurses would call a ?semi-comatose state?.

I wrestled with the idea a final visit. I wanted that moment, and didn't. Love and pain and need and loss pulled me toward and away. I told myself that all she was, had already gone. My mother, in every true sense, was gone, and watching her body struggle on for a few more hours, a few more days, would give me nothing.

But I knew I was lying to myself about that. So when they told me the time was close I made that drive again, went back to that sad and quiet room . . . and this is what I saw:

I didn't see my mother, small and thin with disease. I didn't see a dying woman in nightclothes and a hospital bed. What I saw was a golden being, winged, struggling in a body like old bandages and rags.

I saw it, like I see the walls around me now. Like I see my own hands. Not imagination, not "the mind's eye". I saw the soul -- matured and ready to fly, fighting the grasping chrysalis that had nurtured it for all its long years on this earth. I saw the soul contending with the body --a primitive thing of appetites and desires, a vessel, fighting desperately to keep a hold on that which kept it alive . . . and which had finally come to its time to fly.

So I sat with her. And I held her body's hand. And I gave her all energy and magick I have, to help her break free. And I watched the lighted being inside struggle to pull itself out for a day and a night.

For days, weeks, there had always been someone with her. always someone in the room. We made sure of that, so she would never be alone. But there was one moment on that last day, when everyone was suddenly drawn elsewhere. This person had a sudden errand, that needed that one to give them a lift. One person had to step away for this, another for that. Even I - the one person there with nothing else to do, nowhere else to be, felt a sudden pull: I need to walk out in the backyard for a minute. I need to be among the trees.

So I stepped away. We all stepped away, just for moment. And in that moment, she stepped away too.

My mom lived to take care of other people. She never liked to be waited on, and she never liked to put people out. So, really, we should have known she'd do something like that.

Those moments after are too full for my memory to hold all of them - crying and comfort and sorrow and release - but I remember two things clearly. One, the trees outside were suddenly filled with woodpeckers - a dozen, maybe two dozen. One minute they weren't there, then they were - pecking the trees, singing, flitting back and forth.

Woodpeckers have been significant for me ever since. Heralds of change.

Second, and so much more important, I saw more of them. Eight, maybe nine, golden, winged beings soaring around the house, as real as the woodpeckers, as real as the trees. Beings like my mother had become, come to witness and welcome the newest of their kind.

I don't believe we all become the same thing when we die. I think each of us has a core nature, something we just are. Our lives are best when we grow into that nature - and when, after one life or a thousand, we finally grow fully into that nature, we become something new, and move on.

My mother was a caretaker, like I sad. And what she became was golden and warm. What she became was what I suppose you would call an angel, but that's a crude word for what I saw.

I don?t need you to believe all of that.

I don?t need you to believe in magickal sight, or souls, or energy, or golden beings struggling free of dying flesh.

Call it allegory. Call it the delusions of a son?s grief. Call it clever fiction.

I just tell you all this because today is her birthday - the fourth one since she left - and I miss her. Though I believe we live multiple lives, I believe I saw her last one here. She became what she was, and has gone on. And that makes me happy and sad all at once.

I tell you this because I want you to know what I saw, whether you believe it or not, because it's something I think should be shared - because that moment is waiting for us all, and however and whenever it comes to you, it should find you as what you are - as close to that as you can possibly push yourself in the time you have.

So that when your time comes, you can fly.

Blessed Be.

Source: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/09/15/1132347/-How-She-Died

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