If you follow me on Facebook, you know that I just returned from a two week trip in Charlottesville, VA.
Edie, my boyfriend’s mother – was taken to hospice after complications from a stroke and we were told that it was a matter of time before her body was ready to transition.
I had never imagined I would bear witness to death as intimately as I did.
To be honest, losing my mother has always been my biggest fear in life and I wasn’t sure how the experience with Alex’s mother would transpire for me.
And yet, I can say that it was one of the most beautiful experiences I have ever had.
Over these two weeks, I got to meet the rest of Alex’s four siblings and witness so much healing, peace, magic and deep love.
I felt a close connection to Edie since meeting her last November. While the visit was short, Edie, Alex and I spent a magical time together as you can see below.
At age 94, when the photo above was taken, she was still teaching anthropology at the University of Virginia.
Edie started her academic career at the sweet age of 65 when her husband – Victor Turner – a world-renowned anthropologist had died unexpectedly.
For a spiritual person like myself, I thought it fascinating that my potential mother-in-law would be a masterful student in shamanism, spiritual healing and oneness.
In her research, Edie’s question was: What would anthropology be if spirits are real? Her answer, in books like Communitas: The Anthropology of Collective Joy and Among the Healers: Stories of Spiritual and Ritual Healing around the World was an affirming, spiritually engaged, orthodoxy-busting anthropology.
You can hear Edie being interviewed about old age, death and anthropology at age 92 here.
Edie was the epitome of living life to the fullest. She was known for her loud and rambunctious laugh: HA, HA, HA.
She had strong opinions about life and was a fierce advocate for social justice and equality. She’d traveled to the far parts of Africa (Zambia in particular), Japan, Israel and Brazil studying ritual and its key role in human society.
And yet, when we met last Fall, we fell in love instantly. We talked about human nature, politics, communism, played Scrabble, watched movies, went on walks and I felt so loved and welcomed by her.
That was one of Edie’s gifts. She made people feel so loved and in turn she was incredibly loved.
While she was in hospice, she had an endless number of visitors from next door neighbours who’d go on walks with her, to her Church choir friends, to highly respected academics and her entire close family at her bedside until she passed peacefully in her sleep on Saturday morning, June 17th at 6.27am ET. It was exactly a day after her 95th birthday.
I felt like we lived a lifetime during the days she was in hospice.
Her children healed and forgave old wounds, we sang happy birthday to her in her hospice room, a volunteer came and played beautiful melodies on the harp, people came to share their blessings, we played Mozart and Beethoven in her room and read her poetry and religious scripture from various denominations.
Edie lived life fully on her own terms – fiercely devoted to her work and her family – and made a peaceful and graceful exit into her next life.
While I am still processing everything that happened, I am so grateful to have seen such a celebration of life and to have been a part of her immediate family.
Some of the takeaways from my experience have been:
1. Celebrate life to the fullest and live on your own terms. Whether you get to live to 95 or tomorrow, are you living fully?
2. Love deeply and with no regrets. If you have disagreements and grievances with your family, take the high road and be willing to release them. This had been one of Edie’s last wishes and she got it. Edie received so much love during her last days because she epitomized love and was always there to help others in need from graduate students to her next door neighbours.
3. Live your values and don’t compromise yourself. This speaks for itself.
4. Embrace a sense of adventure in life and stay open to new possibilities. Edie traveled to obscure parts of the world and made friends in every culture in which she immersed herself. She had an enormous curiosity for life and made you feel like the most important person in the room.
5. Death can be a beautiful experience. I had always had images of people sobbing incessantly and it being a sad experience. And while it definitely was sad and tears were shed by all of us, it was a beautiful time of love, gratitude, remembrance and joy for a life well-lived.
6. Value each breath you take. As Edie’s breathing began to shift closer to the date of her passing, I began to monitor each breath she took and was in awe of how breath truly is life. It also reminded me that with each inhale we get to make a new choice towards our health, happiness and our dreams.
In the midst of the time of Edie’s passing, we also got to celebrate 3 birthdays: her own the day before she passed, her granddaughter’s (coincidentally on the same day as Edie’s birthday) and my boyfriend Alex’s birthday this week.
And while we definitely had a beautiful funeral mass for Edie, the entire experience for me as an intimate spectator was all a gorgeous celebration of life in all its forms.
As I saw all of her sons and relatives fly in from across the world to be at her funeral and by her side at hospice, I was reminded that any occasion, including death, is an opportunity to live, love, laugh and to celebrate ourselves and each other.
While we will all miss Edie, we have peace in our hearts knowing that she loved fully, lived loudly and left her unmistakable mark on the planet.
Her last wishes were to have her ashes buried in England where she was born and a lovely memorial service will be offered later this summer to celebrate her amazing life and spirit.
I am so honoured to have met such an amazing woman and to have been welcomed into her family with such open arms.
Having opened myself to this experience, I have come out of it with so much growth, appreciation for life and death in fact. While it’s never an easy subject, I was amazed by how well the family honoured her wishes and came together at a tough time.
This was in great part because Edie was really specific about her wishes at her funeral and in her will. It reminded me that we can all put down our wishes in writing now so our loved ones know what we want after we’ve gone. It’s a gift we get to leave those who stay behind us. This might be something you choose to do after reading this post.
I only wish that we can all have a beautiful life and passing as Edie did and that we may remind ourselves on a daily basis of our power to live fully, laugh loudly, love deeply and to leave our legacy in the world in the way that only we can.
Here’s to Edie and to us living every day fully.
