Stories of Hope and Healing – Elizabeth

ELIZABETH

Liz was my friend. She died too young. She died as she lived – prepared, organized, no unfinished business, except the business of living which she would have liked to continue with but could not.

The year before she died she was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer that had spread. She made the choice to fight it and win. She took every treatment and healing strategy available and reasonable. She was a reasonable person.

Liz was a creative person and took a creative approach to life. She lived her life in a conscious way and she did the same through her illness and death. She was a curious, thoughtful, examiner of life. She believe in personal growth and was a person of faith. She tried to learn from every experience, and leave things better than she found them.

She always made an effort to put positive energy into the world. She loved relating to people and had many friends and loved ones.

Sometimes an illness is a portal for unification, a miracle, for love, a path to raise up a person or a family which are already beautiful, good and true. Sometimes illness is a wake-up call to redirect one’s life, to let something go, to change. Sometimes illness is a way to find out who loves you. Sometimes illness is the path of life itself.

And sometimes illness is a path to die. It is the way out and the body will not survive. Along the way though healing can take place.

Liz’s illness was like that. It was her path to die. As much as she wanted to get better, the cancer was always at least one step ahead of her, never remitting, never giving her a break, but racing onto it’s final conclusion, continuously taking more and more of her life as it went.

Liz spent the final year of her life at home, cherishing each day, hoping for the best outcome, caring for her loved ones, letting go. There came a point where she realized she was going to die.

She liked order and organization and process in life and she had a death that gave her that. She closed off each part of her life skillfully and impeccably. She let it grow smaller, while staying fully present to the experience and felt every emotion. She planned her funeral, picked her music, said good-bye to each and every person she loved in a special and unique way to each. She bequeathed her possessions thoughtfully and carefully. She celebrated and quietly went to sleep and died in her bed at home.

Liz died the same way she lived. In the weeks before she died Liz said,

“This is a good time to die. I have left nothing unfinished. My life is complete.”