Month: September 2023

Sacred Moments

/ Julie Gentz / Leave a comment

Today is Saturday, September 30th. Yesterday I flew from my home in Iowa to Centennial, CO, a suburb of Denver, to be with my “little brother” as he, along with his children and grandchildren, began the long walk home with his wife/their mother, who had just begun her transition from this world to the next. I am not going to lie: I didn’t want to come. Not because I didn’t think it was important, because it IS. Not because I was busy and had things to do, even though I did, but I know all too well that death waits for no one or no thing. I didn’t want to come because 2.5 long/short years ago I made the same walk with my husband, Brian, and I was worried about how serious opening that wound would be. And I was scared, And I didn’t want to revisit old memories of Brian’s death. But I told myself I was strong. That my presence, even only for a few days, with my brother and his family would not only benefit them, but also me. It would allow me to take a gut-wrenching, traumatic experience and use it to give back to people I dearly love, while honoring the life of my sister-in-law at the same time.

So, here I am. And is it hard? Yes, very. But, guess what? It is more healing than it is hard. When time has begun to heal the wound left by your loss, and you begin to distance yourself from the event that started it all, the specter of death begins to drift back to the shadowy part of your memory, as well it should because we don’t need to fixate on that every hour of every day. But when you meet death again in body of a loved one or friend, you are reminded of its reality, and of the preciousness of each breath you take. Of each sunrise you are blessed to see. And you experience a going back and moving forward at the same time. You realize that you know death intimately, yet you survived. You have learned that grief is an expression of love. So it’s time for you to be an example for others left behind to mourn that life after death is complicated and painful, but doable and rewarding. That it provides you with a new perspective fueled by beautiful memories, and a love, that though drastically altered from its original state, will be with you always as your guiding light leading towards your own journey home someday. And, when given the chance to share that, it’s yet another gift that cannot afford to pass up.

The following exquisite piece of writing came across my FaceBook feed this morning, and it just had to be shared. Big hugs to everyone reading this. You are a survivor, and you are amazing.

Expected Death –When someone dies, the first thing to do is nothing. Don’t run out and call the nurse. Don’t pick up the phone. Take a deep breath and be present to the magnitude of the moment.

There’s a grace to being at the bedside of someone you love as they make their transition out of this world. At the moment they take they last breath, there’s an incredible sacredness in the space. The veil between the worlds opens.

We’re so unprepared and untrained in how to deal with death that sometimes a kind of panic response kicks in. “They’re dead!”

We knew they were going to die, so being dead is not a surprise. It’s not a problem to be solved. It’s very sad, but it’s not cause to panic.

If anything, their death is cause to take a deep breath, to stop and be really present to what’s happening. If you’re at home, maybe put on the kettle and make a cup of tea.

Sit at the bedside and just be present to the experience in the room. What’s happening for you? What might be happening for them? What other presences are here that might be supporting them on their way Tune into all the beauty and magic.

Pausing gives your soul a chance to adjust, because no matter how prepared we are, a death is still a shock. If we kick right into “do” mode, and call 911, or call the hospice, we never get a chance to absorb the enormity of the event.

Give yourself five minutes or ten minutes, or fifteen minutes just to be. You’ll never get that time back again if you don’t take it now.

After that, do the smallest thing you can. Call the one person who needs to be called. Engage whatever systems need to be engaged, but engage them at the very most minimal level. Move really, really, really, slowly, because this is a period where it’s easy for body and soul to get separated.

Our bodies can gallop forwards, but sometimes our souls haven’t caught up. If you have an opportunity to be quiet and be present, take it. Accept and acclimatize and adjust to what’s happening. Then, as the train starts rolling, and all the things that happened after a death kick in, you’ll be better prepared.

You won’t get a chance to catch your breath later on. You need to do it now.

Being present in the moments after death is an incredible gift to yourself, it’s a gift to the people who you’re with, and it’s a gift to the person who’s just died. Their just a hair’s breath away. They’re just starting their new journey in the world without a body, and in the room they’re launched in a more beautiful way. It’s a service to both sides of the veil.

Credit for the beautiful words — Sarah Kerr, Ritual Healing Practitioner and Death Doula: Death Doula Beautiful Art by Columbus Community Death Care

The Silent Scream

/ Julie Gentz / Leave a comment 

During the pandemic I saw a Facebook post showing a sign at a theme park in Japan that read: “Please scream inside your heart.” At first glance it looked like a bad translation of the request, “Please don’t scream out loud when you get scared on this ride.” At the time I saw this I was a 24/7 caregiver for my husband whose Parkinson’s Disease suddenly seemed to be on an increasingly rapid, downhill spiral. And, while feeling that I had been working on “screaming inside my heart” because of this, it occurred to me that this obscure little phrase also had profound meaning for the unprecedented times in which we found ourselves living when the pandemic entered our lives. 

Perhaps you, too, have experienced this “silent scream.” Thinking back over my lifetime, I can remember a time or two when I was so scared that even though every inch of my body said, “Scream!”, I found myself incapable of uttering a sound. Truth be known, many of us have probably had moments when we’ve experienced this “silent scream phenomenon.” Life as a care giver had already unceremoniously tossed old routines out the window, replacing them with complicated regimes of endless therapies, doctor appointments, pill schedules, fatigue, and burnout. Then, just as I had begun to adjust to “care giver normal,” along came COVID. Once again life’s routines were altered, replaced by social distancing, sheltering in place, and isolation from family and friends. While this unwelcome incursion of the pandemic into life added to the complexity of being a caregiver, Brian’s death a year later became my own private pandemic. It felt for all the world like the rug had been pulled out from under me again, throwing me to the floor, wondering how I would ever get up.

Thinking back, it seems to me that, surrounded by fatigue, doubt, and grief over so much of life that seemed lost, the silent scream had begun to creep into my body, slowly rising to a deafening roar and taking up residency inside my heart on the day that Brian died. Every day since, its constant drone has been the background noise in my life, reminding me, and me alone, of how much I lost. How alone I was.

Grief is like that, I've learned. It’s a scream that broke my heart, but that I wasn’t going to let break my resolve. Eventually I learned to pause. To close my eyes. And to just simply breathe. Now, two and a half years after Brian’s death, this silent scream has taken on an entirely new meaning for me. While its cacophony is somewhat quieted by the passage of time, I know it will still, in some small way, always be with me. But learning to live with it has brought me to the realization that I still have life that needs to be lived. So, even though I know that scream will still rise to the surface sometimes, I am learning to live with it. And on those days that I hear it a little too loudly, I’ll keep telling myself, “You’ve got this!” And life, and I, will go on.


                             And this silence
                             without you
                             is like a scream
                             only my heart
                             can hear.

                             Edward Lee