So here it is.  Most of us are familiar with thinking of ourselves as a combination of body and spirit.  I would like to suggest that there is a third element — something distinct, yet interconnected, which might be called personality energy — which is perhaps most noticeable during active dying.   This isn’t about mental or psychological energy per se, though they contribute to it. Rather, this personality energy encompasses our deeply personal stance towards living and deathing — including our fears, hopes, and core attitudes.

The concept is this: as one transitions in active dying, their personality energy does not vanish (no energy can just vanish).  Instead, it radiates into the environment around them.  If they approach deathing in fear or regret, that energy is released and affects those in their environment.   Conversely, a death met with acceptance and contentment can emit a positive energy, potentially affecting others.  This perspective suggests that striving to cultivate conscious positivity in our culture’s approach to deathing could — in an individual’s deathing process — not only affect their experience, but also impact the psychological landscape of those around them.

To illustrate, imagine we could quantify this personality energy.   If a person’s attitude towards death is 51% negative, and they are surrounded by positive energy released in an active dying, that negativity could decrease to 49%.   Likewise, if they have a 51% positive outlook and experience more positive energy around them, it could increase to 53%.   While these numbers are symbolic, they suggest that the collective positivity of individuals towards deathing might gradually shift our cultural attitude towards a more positive approach to the whole process of death.

Is there concrete evidence for such a release of personality energy into the environment?  No — not beyond the normal psychological influence that is naturally experienced when being exposed to a positive approach in another’s deathing. 

However, I have noticed that, in several deathings that I have attended, there is a very easily identifiable energy radiating out of the body ─ felt as heat, and sometimes too hot to touch!  Most often, this energetic release comes from the hands and feet — although I have also experienced it as doing likewise from the top of the head — as if a personal essence is being released.  Is it possible that this ‘flooding’ is personality energy being released into the environment, and not merely a ‘thought experiment’?

•  CINDEA has begun to use the term ‘deathing’, instead of ‘death and dying’ (a term in which the words are chronologically backwards!), to indicate that the process IS a process, not a moment in time: it reframes dying as an extended journey, rather than a singular event.   It begins when one considers their own morality (perhaps in relation to the quality of another’s deathing), or while doing their advance-care-planning, through terminal diagnosis (or frailty equivalent) and active dying, the actual moment of death, and even beyond if one believes in some form of ‘after-life existence’.   It also includes the fact that the out-livers (a more factual term for ‘survivors’) continue to experience that deathing in the form of grief.
  
  This understanding of deathing as a continuum encourages us to think of life and death not as nouns/moments, but as verbs/processes; and not as separate, but as part of a wholistic journey — one that we navigate not just in the final days, but across our lifetime.

November 7, 2024 — Pashta MaryMoon By My Heart and Hand teacher

Japanese womyn grieving at seaside

I felt so blessed on the clear sunny January day overlooking the Noth Shore mountains where my dad loved to ski for 50 years. We were graced by an eagle circling round the trees above us.  Papa chose a fine day to go.

Immediately post death I was able to take charge of washing and dressing my dad.  I found myself speaking to him throughout the washing process.   This was one aspect of the home funeral that I was able to do.   As well, we played drums and sang many songs with my 2 sisters outside the window of the room where he lay in state.  This was our intuitive and spontaneous "sending off" ritual by us 3 daughters.  Washing, dressing, singing & drumming in ceremony took me a long ways to realize and process my father's passage.  

My father did a lot of good in this world.  He brought awareness of the importance of justice and human rights to the immigrant population in Greater Vancovuer, and throughout B.C.  He was a longstanding volunteer teaching classes at the Peopl's Law School at the Justice Institute.  He won multiple community Awards for outstanding service to the Japanese-Canadians. and for people of all ethnicity in Canada.  For all these things, and for adapting to life in Canada when he left his tenured professorship at a renound University in Tokyo at the age of 40 and took his whole family to Canada, my mother's home at her request.

So I honored him by designing a beautiful ceremony after his death in front of the community gathered at his celebration of life. I brought beauty ~ carefully designed flower arrangements around his protrait, beautifully sung songs, and live Japanese shakuhachi flute played while people had the opportunity to offer carnation blossoms in front of his altar.  So despite my "distance" emotionally with my father, I still showed my respect and gratitude to him.

I had a moment of nostalgia and sadness when I found his old cell phone where I discovered his recording of short little videos of things aroung him in his room, or accidentally shot a few seconds of footage.  After viewing many dozens of short videos, I felt grief.  This was a full 2 years after his death.

It's complicated.  I am grateful that I had my life in both Japan and in Canada.  Thanks to my dad, I have a rock solid sense of Justice, human rights for the minority and immigrant population and of ALL kinds of peoples in Canada.  He did his very best to find his place in his adopted country of Canada.  I am grateful for my mother and father's 65 years plus of solid marriage and giving us 4 kids a stable home life.

Thanks Papa.   You did very well and we are all okay.   Mama is fine too, though she is slowly losing her memory. 

October 20, 2024 Alisa K. — By My Heart and Hand graduate