This Month's Article:
"Midwifing Into Death"
by Ali Hammer Winans
My dear friend Ali offers another article, so appropriate to the season, in this month's newsletter. It's a moving account of one brave woman who faces her death with an open heart, full of spirit. I hope you find it as touching and inspiring as I did. Find out more about Ali at her website: BeTheFlow.com
~ Connie
To me, these words of the Sufi mystic, Rumi, ring true: "Our death is our wedding with eternity. What is the secret? God is One." Rumi makes death sound ecstatic, and yes, I know that Oneness is our home. But how do I reconcile the aliveness of the spirit with the decrepitude of the body? How do I make sense of the fact that one day someone I love is here, and then they are not? How do I put into ordered sequences of letters and spaces the totality that was my friend, her life, her love and spirit?
I'll begin with the day when Ayesha came for her Jin Shin Jyutsu session looking radiant, and I wondered how much longer I would see her looking so alive. I wanted to capture that image of her, like an earth spirit dressed all in brown with red hair peeping out pixie-like from under her brown and gold crocheted hat, one of her own exotic creations. To her I simply said, "You look lovely tonight. I'm going to take a photo of you." My computer noted that this photo of Ayesha sitting on my bed was taken on October 1, 2006. My memory noted that those were the good days, when she felt well enough one week to give me a massage in exchange for her session, and when each session gave her more energy to carry on living—selling her hats, teaching Dances of Universal Peace, doing massage, singing in the choir and all the other ways she spread her love.
We didn't see each other in December. I was busy, and as for Ayesha, I found out later that she had been at home, not feeling well and not asking for help, because to do so would mean admitting that she couldn't take care of herself, that she was losing control, that her life as she knew it was ending.
Then there was the day in January, I think, when I sat on Ayesha's right side with one hand under her back, the other holding her knee as she lay on the massage table in the middle of my bedroom, and her cell phone rang with a call from her oncologist. As she listened, spoke and cried, I too listened with my ears and also with my hands, continuing the Jin Shin Jyutsu session, gently seeking out the places in her body where she was holding on tight, placing my hands there as if to ground her fears and anguish into the earth. Tears ran out the corners of her eyes and down into her ears as she cried, "The chemo's stopped working. He's going to try taxotere but it makes my hands and feet numb. If that doesn't work, there are only two more chemo drugs left to try." She mopped up her tears with a tissue. "But one's new, and my insurance doesn't cover it. I'm allergic to the other one. I'll be at the end of the road."
I had to offer hope as well as Kleenex. "Or the taxotere will work as well as the last chemo did, and when it stops, there will be a new drug."
"Yes, that's a positive way to see it." But then a deep sob escaped, like a bubble surfacing from a boiling mud pool, and she wailed, "There'll be more times when I feel less like myself and then," grasping her breath, "Then there won't even be a 'me' and I'll be gone. And Sarah's pregnant too." I knew that Ayesha was eagerly awaiting the birth of her first grandson in June and planning a future with him. My eyes were moist as I hugged her until she became calm. She dropped the subject. I continued the session, praying that balance and harmony would come through my body and into hers.
Ayesha, being a Sufi herself, saw death as union with the Beloved, with God. My yogic beliefs were similar—death was liberation from the body into the Supreme Consciousness. And both of us had used our spiritual practices with intent to experience the ecstasy of that union while we still lived. But how were we to reconcile our mystical beliefs with our naturally strong desires to live in our bodies? When I was diagnosed with breast cancer four years previously, I knew how it had been when the pure animal instinct of preservation emerged, and I wanted to do everything I could to hang onto my body.
* * * * * *
It was over two years ago when Ayesha and I first met at the Spiritual Songs Symposium, but even before that I knew of her, of her medical condition and financial difficulties. That night she led a group of Sufis, Jews, yogis, Christians and new age mystics in an Aramaic version of The Lord's Prayer, singing and playing one of her drums. Seeing her bohemian look, dressed in flowing scarves and clothes with exotic prints and embroidery, I felt we would become friends. During the break, I sank into the sofa next to her, introducing myself, "I went through breast cancer by using chemo and surgery as well as natural medicine, so I thought we might have a lot in common."
Quickly overcoming her shock at a stranger knowing her affairs, she warmed to me and confided, "Many of my friends think I shouldn't be doing chemo. They think I'm avoiding the underlying issues that caused the cancer. They keep telling me about techniques and products that would heal instead of poisoning me, but...you know how it is, don't you?"
I knew how difficult ovarian cancer was to treat successfully and that the chemo was almost certainly adding months to her life. "They don't understand, because they haven't been there looking at their own mortality, but I have, and I'm sure you are making the choices that are right for you." I flashed on my own diagnosis, when I was afraid that I would die soon, and remembering that, I built the foundation of our relationship on support and acceptance.
* * * * * *
As February moved into March, I saw Ayesha struggling, and I said, "Let's schedule a session each week, and don't worry any more about paying me back. You need a regular boost of energy." The latest chemo had stopped working, and her belly was bloated like a seven-month pregnancy. When I ate my meals at home, I visualized Ayesha receiving the nourishment. But, she got weaker as daily nausea, vomiting and inability to eat created a downward spiral. At the end of each session, I walked her downstairs from the third floor and out to her car, not sure she could make it by herself. Still, we had genuine hope that she would recover from this setback.
On April 2nd she went into the hospital with a bowel obstruction. Knowing her situation was critical but still expecting her to recover, I said, "I'll come and see you every day. You need help to get through this crisis." But she never got back on her feet. Over the next two and a half months as she went from hospital to nursing home to hospice, I saw her almost every day and held the hand of this world traveler on her final journey while she lay surrounded with flowers, well-wishing cards and bright watercolor pictures painted by visiting friends.
How ironic that our friendship should develop as she was dying. One day I came in early as she was still sleeping and gently laid my hand on hers. A few minutes passed before she said, "That feels like a friend." Unlike the often intrusive, depersonalizing touch of harried medical staff, the healing energy of my touch reached through her body tissues into her spirit and gave her back to herself. As I held her fingers and toes, Ayesha exhaled, flashing me one of her smiles like the morning sun rising in a clear sky, "I love this flow. I can feel all the fragmented parts coming back and all my energy lining up around my center."
Seeing her every day, I became familiar with the realities of a dying body—sudden dry retching that brought no relief from nausea, pain that made her claw at the pillows, legs that were bloated like whales and then became bones with saggy skin, tubes that hung from orifices—but amidst all this, a downy fuzz started to grow from her bald scalp. During the forty-five days that a tube snaked from her nose to her stomach, Ayesha had to suppress her tears because crying made her throat hurt. Day after day, I saw her suffering from the insults of a body falling into chaos, and I asked, "How did you get through it?"
"My commitment was to be present to each moment. That's what I did, and I prayed." She held up her dark wood Sufi beads, like a rosary but with ninety-nine beads and a different prayer for each bead. "I kept going through all the prayers." I was in awe. Would I have the spiritual courage to be able to do that? Then, as time went by, increasing amounts of morphine and the process of dying itself took her in and out of different worlds, into a different kind of presence.
One verdant day in May as I visited her in the nursing home, Ayesha's beauty struck me like a blazing star. She had given up hiding her baldness with a wig or hat. Her head was broad, smooth and very pale, and over the last six weeks I'd become used to seeing her bald. I said to her, "You look so elegant, almost like a monk with your brown shirt and prayer beads." She scrunched up her face.
"I don't like it. I always loved hair, especially my hair. I used to braid a long piece down here and twirl it with my fingers," indicating her left shoulder and down her chest. "It comforted me." Pointing to the back of her neck she said, "Sometimes I still touch myself here for reassurance. I'm glad I still have my eyebrows and eyelashes." I remembered how she had concealed the extent of her illness from her students and clients until everything fell apart. But she hid nothing from me. We held hands, and as I looked into her large grey eyes flecked with green, we cried together.
I realized that I, along with all her other friends, was midwifing Ayesha into death, helping her to let go of her body, but this was no one-sided act of charity on my part. Always teaching, she demonstrated kindness saying, "We'll move that stuff so you can keep your back straight," or "Shall I move my legs closer to make it easier?" Day after day I placed my hands on her body and we talked, or mostly she talked and I listened to stories of her travels, of longing for a mate, of raising her child in a multi-cultural community. Every day she blessed me with her honest words, her trust in me and her vulnerability, teaching me about intimacy and inspiring me to be a better person. Being with her was like being in a holy shrine where the beauty of the soul trumped the outer appearances, and the constant flow of friends and family was love in action. To the end, Ayesha performed her interfaith ministry bringing people together with music and healing and art. I benefited by being in the flow of so much love.
I remember the day; it was May 19th, the day of her daughter's baby shower, when, after using Jin Shin Jyutsu to relieve her daily headache, I sat next to her bed. I had an intuition that the doctor would not give any more chemo. Her eyes filling, she looked at me and said, "The doctors are giving up on me. They say I only have six weeks to three months."
"You're so strong. I can't believe it." We both cried.
"I've played through so many versions of the baby shower in my head, thinking I could be there, and now I have to let it go." We held hands, reaching over the bars at the side of the bed.
Then there was the day when Ayesha floated in and out of dreams, and I sat with another friend beside her. Suddenly she opened her eyes and exclaimed, "Shemaya, shemaya, the light of the universe!" She waved her arms as if blessing us with the joy that radiated from her wasted body. That was the day that her grandson, Jonathan, was born, arriving just in time to be held and blessed by Ayesha when she was still able to talk.
A week later, on June 18th, she left her body.
©2001, 2007 Connie Habash
