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Blissful Release

Laura Parkes reflects on a personal bereavement that she believes has had a profound affect on her. Her grandmother died in January of this year.

I was with Muriel at her death, a powerful experience. I became very aware during the time I shared with her in the hospital, watching my lady lying unconsious, face drawn, covered with a mask, while too much air was pumped into her tight chest, that there comes a time when remaining in the body is a trap for the soul and it becomes necessary to escape. This, we know as death. A parting of company between the spiritual and the physical, which I found myself blessing from the depths of my own soul. When I saw her, I felt this sense of being trapped so strongly that my instinctive reaction was “God, take her away, please take her away.” I had entrusted her care to the Divine before I reached her, for her to wait for me. I arrived at the hospital and realised that this entrusting must now take a different form - entrusting her soul beyond her physical life. The physical was no longer necessary. She was ready to enter the realms of eternity — to become one with the universe. The death of the body is merely the reuniting of the soul with the divine, eternal energy that is life.

The sacred nature of life is preserved in our hospitals, but they never question exactly what life is - whether it is more beneficial and benevolent to save the life of the soul or the life of the body: which is more sacred?

Peace is a way of being, a way of embracing the world. It gives us an incredible freedom to love without fear.

Then Almitra spoke, saying, We would ask now of Death.
And he said:
You would know the secret of death.
But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?
The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day
cannot unveil the mystery of light.
If you would indeed behold the spirit of death,
open your heart wide unto the body of life.
For life and death are one even as the river and sea are one.

In the depth of your hopes and desires lies your
Silent knowledge of the beyond;
And like seeds dreaming beneath the snow
Your dreams are of spring.
Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate
To eternity.
Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd
When he stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon Him in honour.
Is the shepherd not joyful beneath his trembling,
That he shall wear the mask of the king?
Yet is he not more mindful of that trembling?

For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind
And to melt into the sun?
And what is it to cease breathing but to free
The breath from its restless tides, that it may rise
And expand and seek God unencumbered?

Only when you drink from the river of silence
Shall you indeed sing.
And when you have reached the mountain top,
Then shall you begin to climb.
And when the earth shall claim your limbs
shall you truly dance.

From “The Prophet” by Kahlil Gibran.

Laura Parkes is a first-year student of English and Philosophy.

Last modified: 25th November 2005