start 'splaining: death midwifery
Friday, March 16, 2012 at 07:26AM 
photo: Sarah Ann SmithMy friend Nancy had a dream once that has stuck with me. Normally my 15-second rule about dreams -- i.e., you have 15 seconds to talk and then I stop listening -- prevents me from hearing people out when they begin a sentence with, "I had the weirdest dream last night," but I think Nancy told me this story before yoga in Sausalito one Saturday morning, when our mats were snuggled up next to each other and we were leaned in, chatting. Since we were beyond the limits of my house, the 15-second rule might have been trumped -- Nancy might have gone to 20, maybe even 30. In the dream Nancy was standing on a cliff in the Headlands. The way to get to San Francisco, if I remember correctly, was to just walk straight off this cliff. She was hesitating. Then suddenly I was there, I took her hand, we took that big step together, without another thought, with joy.
Of course I don't know what that means at all, except that we always interpret it as some strong validation of the love we bear each other. In my bones I know I would walk off a cliff with Nancy, with her delicate little paw in mine. No hesitation. Such a sweet little dream, leaving aside the goofy suicide pact part of it, of course!
And it occurs to me this morning that that person -- the stepping-steady-off-the-cliff person -- I am that, not all the time but not infrequently. Suddenly I'll realize that at some point, behind me, I must have made up mind about something since I'm on the brink of doing it -- about to step off the cliff, in other words -- and marveling at how I got there. There was a process of deliberation, of course, a series of little mental locks my mind went through to go from the Pacific to the Caribbean, but it's almost like it happens so smoothly, the machinery of the process whirring and spinning so efficiently, that suddenly, I'm afloat in turquoise water and I hardly remember any effort to arrive.
That's how it was with this death midwifery course I am doing this weekend.
I know this is how my decision went down, because when I was talking to Joe about the class last night, he really didn't know anything about it at all. Meaning that my process was entirely internal and fast.
More normally, I'll devote a page to something in my notebook as I start thinking about it. I'll sit at the dining table with Joe and talk to him about some proposal I've come up with, interview him regarding his thoughts and reactions, do some research thereafter, report back in with my results. Let's be clear: I'm never asking for permission or seeking agreement. I'm checking in, exploring his reactions, trying to see what I might have missed. At least I think that's what I normally do. In the case of this death midwifery class, the quiet gears got spinning on March 4th -- when I was writing about watching The Gifts of Grief and doing my usual nerdy best to prepare for my baby sister Carla's death by studying everything I could. On March 5th I emailed Jerrigrace at Final Passages in Sebastopol to inquire if there was any space left in their course that begins today. I had clearly already made up my mind to step off this particular cliff, and was just doing the due-diligence to ensure there were no obstacles in the flight path.
So for Joe and for everyone else who keeps looking at me blankly about what I'm doing, here's the scoop. I'm taking the Level I class described below starting today at 9am, through tomorrow at 5pm, with plans to do Level II in April, Level III in May.
photo courtesy: Final Passages
As homework this week, we had a questionnaire to complete which I suppose will assist the organizer(s) to prepare for the particular mix of people in the room, to anticipate where the emotion might be, more skillfully navigate any fresh grief. I enjoyed answering the questions, although I worried, after I hit Send, that really I'd ended up crafting a bit of of a bossy manifesto, describing the terms of my engagement so to speak, building clear ramparts around my self since I'm nervous about a lot of things in this workshop, not least of which the people. Here are my answers.
I loved writing the words, "I am an atheist." I loved thinking about how I hope to feel at the end of my life, what I would hope to give to others as a gift in this time. Who knows: maybe this really is something I could offer as a seva, as a service to others -- a graceful exit from this life.
But I'm trying not to get ahead of myself, one foot in the air, over the edge of the cliff already, other foot still planted. Today is going to be long and intense, most likely. There's plenty of time to step off other cliffs when I'm done with this one, Nancy's little hand, and yours, in mine.
XX
Reader Comments (2)
Bon courage! ♥
I love that you posted your questionnaire responses. I love how you responded....I would have said the same thing about most of those questions. I wish you lived closer so we could hang out...Come over next time you're at one of those workshops and I'll take you down to see those babies again. This time you'll have to have a beverage, at the very least.