My Aunt Bobbie, my dad’s sister, in the photo above between my parents, passed away Monday morning. She, too, had dementia but didn’t live as long as my dad because her beloved husband passed away a few years ago and she could never find joy after losing him. Watching my aunt die of dementia was very sad but, as with my dad, the overall emotion is relief that she is no longer suffering. I can tell a lot of people don’t understand the part about feeling relief when someone has died. If you haven’t lost someone you love to the slow death of dementia, I imagine it’s hard to envision feeling relief. At the time of her passing, my aunt’s personality was so far removed from the woman she used to be it would have been cruel to wish her to live longer. Now she can be free. Now she can go and do whatever it is we do when we leave here. I’m not sure exactly what happens but I do believe we go to a place where all the good you can possibly imagine comes true.
Lately I’ve been thinking about how we learn to say goodbye to someone who is dying. I’ve come to realize that the goodbye is my own internal process, my letting go. Everyday I am met with countless moments that offer me the practice of letting go. When I make a mistake, I have a choice: let my mind run over and over what I did causing me more pain or let go of the episode and not beat myself up about it. When I eat a lot of sugar, which puts me into a sugar coma, I can either ruminate over the fact that I’ve been struggling with this compulsion for most of my life or accept what I did, let it go and see what I can learn from it. Several years ago I made peace with being single after having had many, many years of pain and suffering because of it. Letting go of that allowed me to see that I am actually happy on my own. These days I am letting go of worrying about being about 20 lbs overweight. I find it brings me more peace to focus, instead, on how strong and healthy I am.
Perhaps these smaller acts of letting go help prepare me for the bigger ones, like saying goodbye to my dad and my aunt. Maybe my ease with letting go these days was made possible by the nonstop practicing I’ve had my entire adult life, working to break free from the worry and thoughts that have held me prisoner. Maybe every single day is a chance to apply the art of saying goodbye in lots of tiny ways.
Godspeed Aunt Bobbie. Tell my dad I miss him when you see him.