The Magical Moment of Death

24 years ago, at sunset, I said goodbye to my mother in her earthly body. 

We knew her death was approaching because she had begun slipping in and out of consciousness as her organs began to shut down. A few nights before she went into a coma for the final time, she woke up suddenly, and said to my sister, who was doing the nighttime vigil, “Well, they are all here”. 

My sister- thinking she was not fully lucid- asked her sweetly who she was referring to, trying to calm her, concerned she might be having some delirium. 

My mother answered serenely,  and responded with the names of our many loved ones who had already died, who she could apparently now “see” were waiting for her, to welcome her to the other side. 

The veil between this life and the next was falling away for her now, and she could see herself on the threshold between the two worlds. 

She wasn’t afraid. 

In fact, as she and I planned her memorial service in the weeks prior, she had told me laughingly, “it’s going to be a really nice event, and I feel silly saying it , but I’m disappointed that I won't be able to be there…”

She was there, of course, but not in her body. 

On that day, after a severe heat wave that had ravaged the region all season - the worst in many years due to months of drought-  the rain fell in abundance for the first time in a very long time. 

My mother, an avid gardener who loathed to see her plants parched,  had told a close friend prior to dying, “If I have any influence at all up there, I will give all the plants a good, long soak.” The entire day of her memorial service we were wet, the creek rose and her garden flooded. 

It was her way of telling us that all was well. 

She often comes to me in the rain when I miss her. One day when I felt particularly alone and forsaken, I prayed for assistance, and within an instant of finishing the prayer- as if in response- thunder erupted and rain fell on me so hard that I had to run for cover. 

At other times I feel her near to me in the owl that comes to guide me in the woods near where I live when I stroll alone, in meditation.  He flies above me when I walk, then sits in the branches of the trees just above me when I sit to pray. 

My dad countered my mystical thinking with the logic that maybe the owl was just marking his territory as a hunter by being close to me as I walked through his territory.  I shook my head at him, and later laughed when he told me the owl had come to perch in a tree above him while he was tending my mother’s garden. 

I’m a scientist, but also a mystic. Because what is science, anyways, but the physical manifestation of God’s magic? The two are not mutually exclusive, after all. 

The birthing of a child- for example- is both an act of science, and a Divine magic trick. 

Suddenly a new human being is present in this world- the scientific byproduct of an act of love between two existing souls. 

Simply magical….

One morning, not long ago, I woke up feeling afraid after a bad dream, and opened my eyes to see the owl’s massive eyes peering down at me. He was perched precariously close outside my bedroom.   

“I see you,” she was telling me, :”you are not alone- you are never alone- do not be afraid”.

In her last few days, 24 years ago, all my mother’s children and her husband took turns at her bedside, saying prayers with her, telling her how much we loved her, preparing her soul to let go.  

I didn't want to miss the magical moment of her soul’s release, but I was incredibly tired after several days of vigil. So I told myself I needed to rest and went to lay down. Before I shut my eyes I asked God to wake me if my mother was going to die. 

My eyes fluttered open an hour or two later and immediately I knew I needed to get up. I went directly into her room where my two sisters were with her. Her pattern of breathing had just changed, my sister said, a sure sign she was going to die soon. 

We went and called the whole family. All of her children and my dad came to be with her in those last few minutes. Her breathing was ragged as her body was releasing her soul. Suddenly, she sighed a deep sigh of relief, as if she had just witnessed a beautiful mountaintop view. 

My dad closed her eyes with his fingers gently as she had asked him to do, and whispered tenderly to her, “Godspeed…and, thank you.”

And then she was free. 

We then left her bedside and went out to be with her in the garden, because we knew she was no longer in that body. It was a very sad moment, but also a beautiful one. 

And I remember thinking that death, in some ways, is as magical as birth. It was only sad to us because we were the ones left behind. 

Whatever my mother experienced on the other side was as glorious as the birthing of a child into this world for those on the outside of the womb.