Lessons from Life’s Final Moments

By Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D.

The message has been given over and over again by those who know that the final days or hours are near. Randy Pausch learned he had terminal cancer and stood up to give The Last Lecture at Carnegie Melon. In this lecture he told his class and eventually the world that “We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.” He spoke of recognizing being in the moment and taking advantage of it, because after all, at some point or another we may realize that we don’t have as much time as we think.

Morrie Schwartz was living his final days as a result of Lou Gehrig’s Disease. When Mitch Albom found out about this he spent every Tuesday with him learning the lesson that in this life you must learn to love yourself and those around you. He went on to write Tuesdays with Morrie.

It’s really interesting how western culture often doesn’t value our elderly – oftentimes where life’s lessons are held. We seem to get caught in a trance of automaticity and routine and life passes by without recognizing what’s most important.

One reason for this may be because of our denial of death. If you are a person who has someone close to you who has been dying or if it is yourself, you may notice many people not wanting to talk about it. Death makes people uncomfortable; it’s a reminder that we are all impermanent here.

This denial of death is one of the main culprits for not recognizing how precious life really is. When we avoid what we’re uncomfortable with, we close ourselves off to something very important.

I’ve quoted this before, but it’s a good reminder. Rumi says,

“Don’t turn away. Keep your gaze on the bandaged place. That’s where the light enters you.”

We can take a lesson from those who are dealing with the passing of life; things seem to become a lot clearer. All the erroneous baggage we carry seems to slide off as life’s essence emerges. Of course this doesn’t always happen, but enough of these stories have emerged that makes it worth paying attention to.

Randy’s and Morrie’s messages are not unique, it’s just that our minds make the snap judgment that it’s bad to have that reality in our awareness and so auto-pilot takes over and we avoid it. At the same time, we avoid seeing the wonders of everyday life.

We can learn from the fact that life is impermanent.

As author and meditation teacher Stephen Levine says, “If you were going to die soon and had only one phone call you could make, who would you call and what would you say? And why are you waiting?”

As always, please share your thoughts, stories and questions below. Your interaction provides a living wisdom for us all to benefit from.

Pointers for a Broken Heart: How to Heal the Emptiness Within

By Gabrielle Gawne-Kelnar

These sandstone statues decorate the outside of a cathedral in Nuremburg, Germany. They’re the seven virgins of something-or-rather (my memory has faded out the details). And, after some crumbling of the facade, one of them is pointing to the place her heart used to be. It’s missing. Broken off. Gone. And now she stands with an emptiness, a square of pain that’s plainly visible. 

Have you ever felt like this before? Where some piece of you was missing?

Maybe you lost something, or someone, that just seemed to fit your life, completed it in a way that nothing else quite can, and made it (and you) feel whole. And now they’ve vanished.

What do you do? 

Sometimes the desire can be to try to recapture or re-create what existed beforehand. To will the clock to turn back. To re-build the city just as it was before it fell into ruin. (Interestingly, that’s actually what happened to this very cathedral in the photo. After the Second World War, all the old parts of this city centre were rebuilt almost precisely as they’d once stood before the bombs dropped; faithfully restored from town planning maps). Or perhaps, when faced with great pain or heartache, you just want it to stop. To ignore it. To turn away from it (maybe even run away). Or maybe your style is more to fill the hole, cover the void, block it all up with anything that’s distracting enough to work for a few minutes.

And all of these are potentially very valid ways of coping. Of just getting through it in whatever way you can, minute by minute. Yet maybe the statue is also pointing to another way.

For maybe there’s also a place for just standing there and really feeling the emptiness for a while. To acknowledge the shape of it. To honour it in some way, and to come to know it as another, perhaps equally valuable, part of your life. 

Michael Leunig (cartoonist, philosopher and ‘Australian Living Treasure’) seems to think so:

‘When the heart

Is cut or cracked or broken

Do not clutch it

Let the wound lie open

Let the wind

From the good old sea blow in

To bathe the wound with salt

And let it sting.

Let a stray dog lick it

Let a bird lean in the hole and sing

A simple song like a tiny bell

And let it ring.’

Perhaps all of this is simply about allowing more mindfulness in. What do you imagine that might be like? What sounds might you hear, if you just ‘let it ring’ for a while? And how might that cavernous space within you feel, if you stopped ignoring it or stuffing it full of distractions, and just let it resonate for a while with what is …?