By Roslyn Harper
In November 2018, I had the privilege of being with my mother as she approached her last breath. In the week before her death and for a few days afterwards, I experienced one of the most intense spiritual times I have ever known. I felt like I was learning so much about the deeper dimension of life and this critical moment in life, which is physical death, as I watched and interacted with my mother.
During this intense time, I was receiving some deep insights and images in my early morning meditation times. It seems to me that my mother and I both experienced a huge spiritual “growth spurt” in those few days. This is why I use the word “privilege” whenever I refer to this time. I believe my mother’s spiritual growth spurt was part of the dying process and she would have experienced it whether I was there to observe it or not. However, had I not been with my mother, I doubt whether I would have experienced my own growth spurt.
In an amazing example of synchronicity, Richard Rohr in his daily meditations[1] (which I read each day), had a two week series of meditations on Death and Resurrection, commencing Sunday November 11th, through to Saturday 24th November in 2018. My mother died during that time - on Wednesday November 21st 2018.
Prior to Saturday November 10th I had no idea that my mother was even unwell, let alone close to death. On that day, I received a phone call from my sister who was visiting our parents in Tasmania. (She and I both live in Victoria, Australia). She was so concerned about our mother who had developed a serious chest infection that she wanted to give me the opportunity to organise a flight to Tasmania as soon as possible. I chose to fly to Tasmania to be with my other siblings and my father.
As well as living the experience of my mother’s dying days, I was simultaneously being given a crash course in the spirituality of dying through the daily meditations on death and resurrection. I was able to recognise in my mother what I was reading about in the meditations. This is how I knew that Mum was experiencing a huge spiritual growth spurt in those few days before her death.
Richard Rohr’s meditations during this time seemed to be there especially for me - to speak to me as I journeyed with my family towards the impending death.
The meditations quoted a great deal from the book by Kathleen Dowling Singh, The Grace in Dying: A Message of Hope, Comfort, and Spiritual Transformation (HarperOne: 2000). I subsequently purchased this book because I had found the quotes so extremely helpful for me in recognising what was happening for my mother.
The first quote that really spoke to me and helped me to look for signs of a spiritual journey in my mother described what the author saw as she worked as a hospice worker:
I became aware that all of the observed qualities of the Nearing Death Experience point to the fact that there is profound psycho-alchemy occurring here, a passage to deeper being. As I worked with dying people from all walks of life and at many different levels of spiritual evolution, normative patterns of change, of transformations in consciousness, became apparent.
There appears to be a universal, sequential progression into deeper, subtler, and more enveloping dimensions of awareness, identity, and being as we begin to die—a movement from the periphery into the Centre. Further, I realised that the transformation I was observing in people who were nearing death was the same psycho-alchemy—in a greatly accelerated mode—that I had noticed in myself through two and a half decades of practising contemplative disciplines…
I have come to believe that the time of dying effects a transformation from perceived tragedy to experienced grace. Beyond that, I think this transformation is a universal process. Although relatively unexamined, the Nearing Death Experience has profound implications. Dying offers the possibility of entering the radiance, the vastness, of our Essential Nature, at least for a few precious moments. . .
The Nearing Death Experience implies a natural and conscious remerging with the Ground of Being from which we have all once unconsciously emerged. A transformation occurs from the point of terror at the contemplation of the loss of our separate, personal self to a merging into the deep, nurturing, ineffable experience of Unity.
At this point in my life I had been meditating each morning for five years. This experience helped me to have some understanding of the process that Singh was describing. I was able to recognise in my mother the transformation from terror to deeper dimensions of awareness and grace as she neared death. The precious hours I spent at my mother’s bedside when no one else was in the room seemed to be so filled with another Presence who was with us.
In the early part of the week, I was able to converse with Mum. I would ask her what she could see. A nurse told me that Mum was hallucinating. However, I believe Mum was seeing at a depth that we could not see. Her face lit up with a look of such delight one time when she recognised her own father standing at the end of her bed and beckoning to her. She told me (not for the first time) that it was time for her to go home.
As Mum became semi-conscious and was in obvious pain, she was administered medications to deal with the pain. This also meant that she became even less conscious. Yet she was still aware of people being with her. She would squeeze our hands or have a smile on her face when we came into the room and spoke to her. She responded to my playing hymn music that she recognised from her childhood days. I knew her favourite hymn so I played it frequently for her during this time.
A day or so before she died, I just had the urge to hug her. As best I could, I put my arms around her and held her close. I desired to hold her as she lay in her unconscious state. She started moving her arms in an agitated way. I was concerned I was hurting her as I hugged her, so I started moving away, but Mum grabbed both my hands in her hands (in her “unconscious” state) and slowly and deliberately moved my arms with her arms! It was like she was wanting me to dance with her. I could feel such a connection and communication between us. I sensed that Mum was communicating to me that she was very happy and she wanted me to join her in her happiness. Our spirits were one in this dance of transition for Mum.
Mum waited until there was no one in the room in the early hours of the morning before she drew her last breath. In my motel room, I woke just after she died and I sensed a release within me. Then I sensed my spirit was again dancing with her spirit. I could sense that my mother was now free from all her earthly sufferings. I rejoiced for her. She had made the transition and was now transformed into her new life.
The following days were grace-filled for me as I recalled the loving mother I had known nearly all my life. Her beautiful smile which was full of love kept appearing in my mind. It felt like she was accompanying me and helping me in my first steps of healing after six long years of being on a journey of dementia with her. The dementia was now no more. It could no longer haunt me or torment her.
I had gradually lost the mother that I knew over the previous six years, so I had suffered many losses and had grieved so much during those years. (It was after the first torrid year of dementia that I began my daily practice of meditation as a way to help deal with my inner pain. In that sense only, I see the disease of dementia in my mother as a gift to me. It helped put me on a new and much more life-giving path for my own spiritual journey.)
The heading on Richard Rohr’s reflection for the day before my mother’s last breath was Returning Home. This really caught my attention and somehow did not surprise me, because Mum had been assuring us, her family, for the previous week, that she was now “going home”. She was quite certain about this. I had asked her where her home was and she said she didn’t know. (She believed the basic Christian story but had stopped attending church after she met my father some seventy years earlier. He was not a church goer because he had been raised by parents who chose not to teach him the Christian story.)
The heading of the meditation for the day of death was Transition and Transformation. I think this is a good summary of what I witnessed happening for my mother in the days leading up to her death.
Now, more than three years later, as I look back on that intense time of my spiritual life with the “Nearing Death Experience”[2] of my mother, I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to accompany her as she made that inevitable journey towards her death.
For me, I received something I had longed for ever since I was a child – a closeness with my mother at a deep level. In those few last hours with my mother, I felt such closeness at soul level. This was notwithstanding the dementia that had taken hold in her life. In fact, it was as if we got “below” the dementia. The ravaged brain was no barrier to our soul connection.
For a year or so before her death, I had prayed that I would have the opportunity to be with my mother at the moment of her death. What I received was much greater than what I had prayed for! (Ephesians 3:20) In the end it made no difference that I was not physically with Mum at the time of her death because we had become entwined spiritually as a result of the preceding week. My spirit was dancing with her spirit into the freedom of new life as she made the transition. My life is now forever enriched because of this graced opportunity to walk with my mother in her dying days.
May my sharing of my lived experience bring hope and comfort to some who may be in need of it.
Roslyn is a member of the Benedictus Contemplative Church in Canberra, which she attends via zoom. See https://benedictus.com.au/
[1]cac.org Center for Action and Contemplation Daily Meditations
[2]Kathleen Dowling Singh’s phrase.