“Loss of life is our buddy exactly as a result of it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that’s right here, that’s pure, that’s love,” Rilke wrote whereas ailing with leukemia. To grasp the luckiness of death is to understand life itself. When a liked one is dying and we get to be by their facet, it’s a double luckiness — fortunate that we acquired to have the love in any respect, and fortunate, which isn’t everybody’s luck, that we get to say goodbye. Even so, accompanying a liked one as they exit life is likely one of the most tough and demanding experiences you could possibly have.
Easy methods to transfer via it’s what my gifted buddy and sometime-collaborator Wendy MacNaughton explores in How to Say Goodbye (public library) — a young illustrated discipline information to being current with and for what Alice James known as “the most supremely interesting moment in life,” drawing on Wendy’s time as artist-in-residence on the Zen Hospice Undertaking in San Francisco and her personal profound expertise at her beloved aunt’s deathbed.
Punctuating Wendy’s signature ink-and-watercolor illustrations of Zen Hospice residents and her soulful pencil sketches of her aunt are spare phrases relaying the knowledge of hospice caregivers: what to say, the best way to hear, the best way to present up, the best way to keep current with each the expertise of the dying and your individual.
The guide’s beating coronary heart is an invite to develop snug with change, with uncertainty, with vulnerability, radiating a dwelling affirmation of the good Zen trainer Thich Nhat Hanh’s insistence that “when you love someone, the best thing you can offer that person is your presence.”
When you don’t know what to say, begin by saying that.
That’s very weak.
A lot falling away. The physique falling aside.
There’s so much occurring in that dialog.
It’s present.
Proper right here.
Proper now.
Neither of you is aware of what to do on this scenario.
That opens issues up.
In beautiful symmetry to Zen Hospice Undertaking founder Frank Ostaseski’s five invitations for the end of life, Wendy attracts on what she realized from caregivers and distills the 5 strongest issues we will say to the liked one dying — “a framework for a dialog of affection, respect, and closure,” rendered in phrases of nice depth and nice simplicity, just like the language of youngsters, for it’s this realm of unselfconscious candor we return to on the finish:
I forgive you.
Please forgive me.
Thanks.
I like you.
Goodbye.
Emanating from these tender pages is a reminder that dying merely magnifies the elemental reality of dwelling: We’re fragile motes of matter within the neutral hand of probability, beholden to entropy, haunted by loss, saved solely by love.
Complement How to Say Goodbye with Rebecca Elson’s “Antidotes to Fear of Death” and Anna Belle Kaufman’s beautiful poem about how to live and how to die, then revisit Mary Gaitskill on how to move through life when your parents are dying — a few of the easiest, most tough and redemptive life-advice ever provided.
Illustrations courtesy of Wendy MacNaughton
