How to Help the Dying

In your lifetime you will most likely experience the passing away of someone who is near to you. There is a good possibility that one of these people may be succumbing to a terminal illness such as cancer or heart disease or something else.

Most people will jump to conclusions about how that person must be feeling. People will often find that when they cry and despair over the thought of losing this person, they are thinking mostly about how they themselves will cope with the absence of this person.

But when you get past this initial stage of grief and fear, there can sometimes be a limbo that we enter into, where we can begin to think more outside of ourselves. We begin to think of what the dying person may need from us in their final days, in order to find inner peace.

We may look at the dying person and think "How horrible it is that they're dying". The truth is that you cannot know that it's horrible to die, and it is not quite fair to project this belief onto another person. They may not know how they feel yet.

We are all born, and we will all die.

Listening to someone is the most powerful thing you can do for any human being. When someone feels that they are truly being heard, it takes the weight off of their shoulders, and they are able to rest in peace. The greatest gift you can give to someone is to listen to them and to try and understand how they must be feeling. (Of course, you may never know how they're feeling, and you must be okay with this unknown as well - for their sake).

Sometimes people just need to talk, uninterrupted.

Allow your loved one to take the lead on how they want to live their life, and on how they want to be with you. There will be appropriate times to ask them questions or talk about things that have been on your mind. The process that is taking over their body is their own, and the most respectful thing you can do is to follow them along in their journey. To be there for them when they become ready to talk about how their body feels, what they have been thinking about, and if they have regrets in their life.

If there is one thing I learned from going through the journey towards death with my Mom, it's this:

As soon as we began to accept what was happening, the easier things became.

Of course it wasn't easy to know that she would die - and I didn't know when it would happen - But once we understood that there was no way out of the situation, the energy changed for us. We were able to open up in dialogue, and I believe that a big part of this was that Mom was not afraid. I was not afraid for her either. I knew that as she approached her date of death that she was coming more and more into contact with the Great Beyond, the Divine, God, Heaven, or any other name you use.

She had wisdom far greater than I, and she knew where she was going.

At the point of entry to the other side of the veil, your final thought can leave an energetic impression on the last thread of connection between body and spirit. Help your loved one plan for this, and ask them if they would like a certain kind of music to be playing, or if they wish they can pick a prayer or a mantra or a phrase that they can repeat in their mind. If it's written down, you can begin to say it to them as well.

The Light in me sees the Light in you ~ Namaste, Nicole