Death is spiritual. I’m always in awe at how spiritual death is. It may appear clinical - we desperately want it to be so because we try to reverse it at all cost - but it is first and foremost spiritual.
Otherwise how can we explain its inexplicable timing? Even we “experts “ on death, we will never outwit the divine (nor should we want to) and pinpoint death down to the millisecond. That can only come (if it does) through a spiritual revelation, not a clinical one.Â
How can you explain the many, many cases of beautiful strangeness around mortality: the patient who kept defying death and living longer, years past 100, but whose son finally gave her “permission" to pass when he suffered his own debilitating critical illness, realizing through the guidance of his wife that it was time to allow his mother to pass if she was ready - the moment he gave her his permission, she let go; the cancer patient who didn’t appear clinically ready to transition, but announced to us matter-of-factly that she was ready and would be dying the day after tomorrow after she had celebrated with loved ones - she promptly and peacefully did; our critical patients in the hospital, medicated aggressively for comfort, who hold on until hearing the voice of the family member they’d been waiting for; the patient who speaks with his or her deceased loved one waiting with open arms on the other side?
It is this wonderful gray realm which makes death tolerable. We in human form are so blind to so much and can only catch glimpses of the truth. But if we pay attention to the dominant spiritual process of life, death, we learn that existence is above all spiritual, meant for a deeper connection to the divine, and everything else is inconsequential and immaterial.
Death, indeed, is spiritual.Â
Happy New Year!
