Freedom

I was taking a course to become a bereavement companion and was at my weekly training class and the instructor that week was running us through an exercise that taught me something so valuable about what I believe.

She handed all of the students, twelve small pieces of blank paper.  She then instructed each of us to write down three people we love , three things we have that are important to us , three activities we enjoy doing and three quality traits about ourselves, all each on a separate sheet of paper. This took a lot of thought for me and in a short amount of time I wrote down the following.

3 people I love - I chose Wayne my husband because he is my soul mate and very important person in my life. I have five children and could not choose between any of them and so I left them out. I choose my mother and one of my girlfriends.                                                                                                                                

3 important things to me - My wedding ring, my writings, my bible,                                                                                     

3 activities I enjoy- dancing, writing, talking                                                                                                                      

3 quality traits about me- intelligent, creative and free

After this she asked us to close our eyes and she began to walk us through a visual meditation and gave us instructions as we moved along.  

You are not been feeling well and have made several visits to the doctor and are now in his office where you have received a fatal diagnosis. Take a moment and breathe and pay attention to what you are feeling.  You leave the doctor and get in your car you are finally alone, what thoughts are coming to you? You arrive at your home and begin to process this information before sharing the news with your family. How will you tell them? How will they respond? What are you feeling now? Days begin to pass and you begin to experience the loss that comes with this illness. At this point she asks us to throw away any 2 pieces of paper.  

Now I am a very visual person and because I meditate often, I was very much involved in this exercise. My whole being began to see myself with a fatal illness and I began to experience the feelings of helplessness. I took time and thought in what I would throw away and discarded 2 pieces of paper.

As she walked us through the rest of the exercise going into detail about what someone who has a fatal illness experiences and then gave us the choice to throw away pieces of paper that represented “you” it became more difficult and harder to throw away. I also began to understand that this was all about the loss that comes with death. We were finally down to three pieces of paper and all this time I had been thinking and prioritizing the order of what I would choose next and slowly letting go of the loss of things that I thought represented me. Then suddenly she sprung a surprise on us that caused me to gasp so loudly that everyone in the room looked my way to see if I was ok.

She was going to come and take the next piece of paper.

Right then I lost something that I realized was very important to me. I didn’t have any more choices. This profoundly impacted me and I began to pray as I had three things left that were very important to me.  The three pieces of paper were Wayne my husband, my Bible that represented my faith and the quality of free which represented my freedom.

I quietly under my breath began to say take my Bible or Wayne , take my Bible or Wayne , please don’t  take my freedom. I wanted to be left with my freedom, because I felt I knew the word in my heart and that was enough for me. I knew I was one with Wayne and I was willing to let him go as well.

Sure enough she picked the piece of paper that said Bible and I breathed a sigh of relief. I was even sweating at this point and was very heavily invested in this challenging pretend exercise.

Now she had come to the end of our journey and we were near death and at the hospital and she would come around again and remove another piece of paper. I was a bit more relaxed this time around as it worked out ok the last time and I just believed that just the thought that I wanted her to take Wayne was good enough and as I looked at the last piece of paper in front of me- there was the word Free. I was so happy that I had my freedom and that no one could take that away from me.

Then she told us to rip up the last piece of paper because we had now died. She told us that everything was gone and nothing was left.

As I slowly ripped the paper containing my freedom I had a thought, then a feeling and then a revelation. I would never lose my freedom even in death I would still be free or maybe even freer than ever before, because of my faith and my beliefs about death. I would gain back everything and more of what I had lost. I was so happy and relieved at this point that my heart became full and I began to smile with my teeth showing!

She gave us a few moments to sit quietly and to process this exercise and then asked us to share with the group anything about how we were impacted by the exercise. I shared what happened to me and was able to use this as a platform to share my faith in the midst of this class that had many different types of people with different beliefs about death and the afterlife. But this would also set the undertone for my work in bereavement. Freedom would be a pillar of my belief surrounding death and loss. I would use it to frame my life work in every way as I could now see the importance of this state of being to me. This thread has been woven throughout the course of my life and is my eternal message to the world. I am free to be me, you are free to be you and no one can take that from you.

I would have never imagined that one of the greatest lessons I would learn in my life would come from a pretend exercise to help me understand how to be a compassionate bereavement companion.