Deep Grief Care 3

Walking with a loved one who is dying while on hospice care is incredibly difficult and sacred. If you have experienced this deep loss, this may be a wonderful healing reflection for you. This talk was prepared for a Wings of Hope Ceremony and is fitting for anyone who has walked with a loved one on this difficult road.

You may want to order a special live butterfly to release during this reflection (search out "butterfly release") or you may choose to simply imagine doing so.

Transcript

Welcome to an integrative wisdom,

Deep grief care moment.

This reflection includes the release of a butterfly in honor of the death of a loved one.

If this is not possible physically,

Please use the gift of your imagination to do so as you follow along during our time together.

If we never give up hope,

We never get to say goodbye properly.

We are all here with one experience in common,

The death of someone near and dear to our hearts.

Although the details of our loss will be specific to each one of us,

I believe that we are all here with one another.

I believe there are universal truths that will guide our steps as we travel the rocky path of grief and loss.

Let us begin with hope.

This is a universal theme that appears again and again in stories of death and dying.

No matter the specific reason we have chosen to be here,

We are here with hope on our minds and in our hearts.

We may hope for different things,

But one universal truth may be that each of us carries a seed of hope that something will shift within us after this time together.

I know my hope is that as you listen to my words,

You will pause to remember and to honor your loved one,

As well as to take one more step towards healing your hearts and your lives.

Here's another universal truth.

We live in a world of opposites,

Light and dark,

Happiness and sorrow,

Laughter and tears,

Despair and hope.

And truth be told,

Most of us live with the hope that we can avoid this truth.

Sure,

Give us the light and the happiness and the laughter and even the hope,

But we will certainly pass on the dark,

The sorrow,

The tears and the despair.

Unfortunately,

More truth be told when we realize we can't avoid this universal fact that we do live in a world of opposites.

We despair.

Walking the path with one who is dying forces us to face that part of life that we so often hope to avoid.

David White,

A contemporary poet from Wales has said,

The human way to hope is to hope that there's a way to take a courageous step without having one's heartbroken.

He goes on to say that there is no sincere path a human can take without breaking his or her heart.

And I would venture to say that all of us listening here have had our hearts broken as we have had the courage to walk the path with another human soul as they journeyed toward their final days here on earth.

We could not predict or know what this final day would look like.

And so we just had to show up and hope in some wisdom beyond our own to guide us.

Throughout history,

Humans have looked to the healers,

The shamans and the sages,

Those holy ones for help in understanding the mysteries of birth and of dying.

Over thousands of years,

Stories,

Myths and metaphors have emerged as a way to help explain what our minds simply cannot grasp.

Another universal truth it seems,

These universal stories and myths provide a context for us to understand these moments of life that seem outside of the ordinary.

These miraculous,

Magical,

Transcendent,

Sacred and mysterious moments of the heart and of the soul.

In the process of being with someone who is dying,

We may have been very busy with the day to day needs and the physical decline that we probably found it very difficult to imagine any transcendent or mysterious aspects to this process.

Even with the spiritual belief,

We may have felt more abandoned,

Angry or lost than we did hopeful and blessed.

Yet there are numerous books written today that point to the out of the ordinary occurrences that often happen during one's last months,

Weeks,

Days and hours of life.

In one such book,

David Kessler's,

Visions,

Trips and Crowded Rooms.

David talks of that,

Of the fact that strange occurrences,

Synchronicities or visions often happen to either the one who is dying or the caregivers who are at his or her side.

During this dying time when something unusual or out of the ordinary happens,

We may not have enough energy or time to really think or reflect on it.

And if we do notice something strange,

We may choose to ignore it because we fear that others will think we are going off the deep end.

We may even think our loved one is hallucinating or experiencing side effects from medications.

And yet this may be another universal truth,

One that is worth considering,

Especially as we join here today.

What if this experience outside of our ordinary existence,

Contrary to what our minds think,

Is an inkling of something unseen?

If so,

Then perhaps this is one of those times when a story,

A myth or a metaphor may really make a lot of sense.

This is where the butterfly as a metaphor of hope comes in.

Let us take a moment to reflect on the journey that must be taken before a butterfly flaps its wings and soars through the air.

First,

There's the egg stage,

Tiny little specks of potential that are deposited on leaves.

The egg is transformed into larva or what we know of as a caterpillar.

These interesting creatures live to eat and they live to die.

Yes,

The caterpillar must die.

To do this,

It must spin its own coffin,

Otherwise called in butterfly terms,

A chrysalis or cocoon.

But does the caterpillar know this is not the end?

Does caterpillar have a story or myth it can turn to for hope?

Does caterpillar believe in the unseen?

Does caterpillar imagine a new life?

Richard Bach,

Who wrote the book,

Illusions says,

What the caterpillar calls the end of the world,

The rest of the world calls butterfly.

At the time of death,

Many faith traditions look to the idea of resurrection and new life as the next step on a soul's journey.

The butterflies emerging out of its cocoon,

Bringing hope where perhaps there was none,

May help us trust that our loved one's journey is continuing in a new form in some unseen realm.

Perhaps too,

We can use the same revelation to help us trust in our own metamorphosis,

Our new self that lies in the dark,

Biding its time to be revealed.

If we are being honest with ourselves,

If we can be honest with ourselves,

We will admit there are times in this experience that we despaired greatly,

That we despaired of ever having a joyous future,

That we despaired over ever getting over our grief,

That we despaired over ever being able to get up in the morning and do those ordinary things,

And maybe we despaired of ever having a sense of happiness again in our lives.

It's not only adjusting to the loss of our loved one,

It's adjusting to our new identity and how we will now make our way in the world.

We must recognize that this experience and loss has profoundly changed us.

We must find a way to recognize our new life,

One we didn't ask for,

And one we may not have been prepared for.

We have faced our cocoon of loss,

Our cocoon of grief,

Waiting for that moment to emerge from the dark,

Unsure of what we would look like.

We may still not recognize this new self.

We may find ourselves still beating our wings,

Pausing again and again to rest,

Unsure if we are ready to fully spread our wings and fly.

And yet,

As we listen here together,

We reflect on the saying,

Time heals all wounds,

And we reflect on the realization that we will never forget the experience that we went through,

And that we will never forget the loved one that has died.

As each day goes by,

Somehow,

We are given an opportunity to reconnect with the spark of life,

To reconnect with those little things that do bring us happiness.

Yes,

We continue to consider the grief,

And the loss,

And the despair,

The experience beyond any of our imaginations that we could ever have had the courage to go through.

We also realize that life has gone on,

And that we have been given the gift of a new day,

And that we are being transformed through and in this experience that we have had,

And we look to continued healing,

To continued metamorphosis and transformation,

Incorporating the loved one that has gone on before us into this new life that we now have.

In this time together,

We have an opportunity to release not only a butterfly as a symbol of hope,

But we are also able to release any of our feelings and emotions,

Anger,

Sadness,

Grief,

Loss.

We have an opportunity to say goodbye.

Having to say goodbye to someone we love calls us to consider what happens after death.

We may have tried so hard to keep our precious loved one here with us that we may not have been able to say goodbye,

And yet David Kessler tells us,

While saying goodbye is one of the hardest things to do,

It is also one of the most important.

And so as we prepare to release this butterfly,

Whether in our imagination or with the butterfly that you hold before you,

It is my hope that you will be able to once again lift high your spirit,

Lift high your hopes and your dreams for your continued healing journey.

May you consider how you might be able to be out in the world sharing your gifts with others and how you might be able to be love and compassion in the world.

May you determine not to isolate yourself or remove yourself from this world of,

Yes,

Pain,

But also a world of infinite beauty and joy.

Butterflies are a symbol of hope,

Hope that our loved one is safe and settled in his or her new home,

Hope that our hearts will continue to heal,

Hope that our lives will move forward with joy.

It is with hope in our hearts that we end this reflection and that each of you will feel refreshed and renewed,

Ready to go back to the world renewed,

Ready to go forth,

Spread your wings and continue your own precious flight of life.

Reviews

This was really comforting 🙏as I just lost my mum only 3 weeks ago to cancer and my brother 6 weeks ago .