I am supporting my father in home hospice. He is dying. The time with him is a gift to me, a deeply spiritual opportunity and experience, in a very meta form. It’s not about me, of course, it’s about opening to transcendent energy. 

Yesterday, my dad was adamant that he wanted to go to a church service downstairs in his building, even though he could barely walk or stay awake. I’m trying to not be the helicopter daughter, I’m trying to support him in doing whatever he needs to. He started out walking with the walker, as I held onto his belt. He made it about 15 feet beyond the door before his legs started to buckle and he finally accepted a ride on the seat of his walker. When he got to the service, he didn’t know where he was or why. But he enjoyed the service, and took communion. Everyone was happy to see him. He is loved wherever he goes, a testament to the loving social person he is/was. (I did not experience this during my childhood. Instead, we had an intensely critical dynamic that drove me out of his life. It’s lovely to see him now in another light.)

During the service I was looking at everyone around me. No matter what shape they’re in now, they are all going to be like my dad eventually. Dying. Even the minister. Even my children. Everyone on the planet. Every living thing.

This is the next step in being open to my perfect journey. Cancer showed me that I am mortal. I will die. During treatment I actually felt what it would be like to die, and it gave me an organic acceptance of that as a fact of living. It has created a more present life for me. And now, in this experience of my father’s dying, I have become deeply conscious of the fact that everyone is going to die. There is only impermanence.

This is not just a cognitive awareness, but a spiritual awareness. It is an awareness that integrates the spiritual world into the physical world. They are contained in each other, something that I have been told and have thought about, have sometimes experienced, but now I am living it. It feels calm and peaceful. My eyes are welling up with tears at the beauty in it.