The Rally

on taking delight in this brief but privileged incarnation

You’d think, after 30ish years of sitting with people as they are dying, and almost dying myself a couple times, that I’d feel more like a pro. But really: is anyone? At least until they finish the job personally?

As I lean into my new vocation, I’m surrounded by books about death and dying. Books have always been my go-to for feeling less like an imposter, whatever the task before me.

But even if you’re not planning a new career in end-of-life psychedelic care, it might help you to learn & think about death more. There’s ample evidence that it WILL make you more grateful, and your present-moment life more juicy and delicious. As Francis Weller says, “take delight in this brief but privileged incarnation.”

If you only have a few minutes for the assignment I just offered you, I implore you to watch this 4 minute video. It’s a clip from Dying for Sex, a one-season series based on the true story of Molly Kochan’s pursuit of living as fully and sensually in her body before it is snuffed by breast cancer. It’s probably the best 4 minutes of television I’ve ever seen.

Amy, the radiant hospice nurse who has been “talked to about her enthusiasm,” walks Molly, her best friend, and her mother through what to expect in the last weeks of Molly’s life.

[side note: just superb acting from Michelle Williams as the quirky, sturdy Molly; her terrified but loyal best friend played by Jenny Slate, and Molly’s difficult, fragile mother played by the timeless Sissy Spacek]

Amy’s talk with them connected some dots for me about the biological course a body takes toward its last breath. I learned things. I felt things. I remembered things, especially as I surveyed the hospital room made human with the personal detritus of a long stay: Himalayan salt lamp, faded tulips, homemade quilt.

I’ll let you listen for yourself…but here’s just one spoiler: The Rally! It’s a surge of energy and mental clarity that some folks experience before the end, even if they’ve been semi-unconscious and between worlds for days. It gives me Holy Spirit chill bumps just thinking about it. Just like a trickster God/Universe/Brain-Body Continuum to offer something this sneaky and good in the midst of the wrecking ball of slow dying.

And you? Well, you might not die of cancer, it’s true. I wish for you a noble death after rescuing 23 teenage pit bulls from a burning animal shelter at a vigorous 87, or a swift and peaceful death from an aneurysm at age 92 on the plane home from Paris, belly full of stinky cheese (if that sounds oddly specific, a clergy pal told me about just such a lucky duck this morning).

But in all likelihood, most of us will not shuffle off this mortal coil without being in at least one more unspeakably hard death room, perhaps our own. So maybe take a minute to dwell in death. At the very least, may taking that time to walk in its shadow spark in you a little bit of a Rally from the depressive weight of the death-dealing world (why limit ourselves to just one Rally?).

I’d love to hear from you in the comments if you want to share any experiences of having shepherded a beloved’s dying, particularly any good surprises as you walked (and sat, and napped, and wept, and fed, and medicated, and teased, and sang along) that walk with them.

Love,
Molly

ps: there’s one spot left for my daylong renewal retreat at Folkenvale on July 20!

pps: if you’re local and want to get a big bolus of Resistance as Rest all at once, join me on the last day of this Walk for Immigrant Rights from El Cerrito to Dublin women’s prison this coming Monday June 8. The prison closed last year after fierce activism because of human rights abuses; now the feds are thinking about re-opening it as an ICE detention center. NO!