Death Was Not Masked, but Rather Faceless, Smooth and Unblemished

Judith Boice, N.D., L.AC.

For over two years I traveled around the U.S. lecturing on menopause and women's health. Because I was constantly on the go, I carried a pager so that colleagues, friends, and family could reach me in case of emergency. My mom, unfamiliar with the technology, would call the number thinking she could reach me directly. "Mom," I told her as I returned one of her pages from an airport telephone, "I worry every time you page me. I think someone has died."

"Sorry, honey," she crooned. "I just wanted to catch up with you and find out how you're doing."

A couple of months later, I was in a hotel room in Fort Worth, Texas, preparing to have dinner with one of my co-workers. The pager next to the bed began to vibrate and flashed a familiar number: my parents in Ohio.

I dialed, remembering my last conversation about the pager with Mom. My parents sounded tense and weary when they answered.

"Ruth [my sister] was going in and out of consciousness this afternoon," said my mother, her voice as flat as a wind-swept prairie. My sister had recently had surgery to mend a badly broken leg, and I knew any surgery ran the risk of seeding a blood clot, especially in the leg. A blood clot could block the lungs, cause a stroke, or lodge in a major blood vessel. "They took her to the hospital, and she died."

The words rolled through my brain and took all semblance of order with them. I groped for words, asked for details, and struggled to comprehend the enormity of losing the woman who was my closest biological and emotional link in the world.

I cancelled dinner plans and spent the evening crying and trying to choke down some room-service food. My sister was dead. My sister. Dead. The words kept rolling around in my mind, threatening to batter and destroy all of my carefully collected ideas about death and dying. I had counseled others about the power of death and the permanence of the soul. Death was the other side of life that created a sacred whole. "At least I have some spiritual understanding of death," I consoled myself, "which I'm sure will make the grieving process easier for me than the rest of my family."

That arrogant assumption haunted me over the coming years. As the numbness passed, anger replaced it. Why my sister? And where the hell was she? I expected to sense her in my daily life, converse with her in dreams, and generally continue to interact with her on "other levels." True to form, though, my sister exited quickly and cleanly. She was never one to linger or tarry. No doubt her Aryan energy had catapulted her onward . . . to what?

Even my assumptions about past and future lives evaporated in the volcanic eruption of her sudden death. I was no longer certain what happened when someone died. Many times I thought of Ron Evans, a Chippewa- Cree teacher who shared a story about a native woman, raised in boarding school by Catholic nuns, who returned to Ron's reservation to discover her roots. She visited one of the elders, hoping to glean answers to spiritual questions from her own tradition that were as definitive as the catechism of her youth.

After a barrage of questions, she delivered her most urgent query last: "What happens when we die?"

The elder looked taken aback. "How would I know?" he asked. "I haven't died yet!"

I haven't died either, and up to that moment I had never looked death so directly in the face. What surprised me most was that death was expressionless. No joy. No tears. No judgement or celebration. Death was not masked, but rather faceless, smooth and unblemished.

Almost five years have passed since my sister Ruth's death. I have felt her presence only once, in a dream about Christmas Eve at the church we attended in our youth. Slowly I have come to new understandings of our voyage through and out of this life. I no longer believe that we have "life contracts" with specific entry and exit dates. I believe we have several points in our lives when we have the opportunity to leave, stay, and/or transform. I see now that my sister, with few worldly encumbrances, was ripe for a quick and easy exit. I am reluctant to wrap explanations or conjecture around the experience of death. I want to leave space for the Mystery to inform me, in its ruthlessly magnificent way, about the mechanics of death.