This Work Is Going to Take Time.
7 minute read
How many times have we made ourselves available to the journey without fixing every hope on the destination? Does anyone really do that? Is it easy to do for some and not easy for others? I’ll admit, I’m prone to fixating on the destination and sometimes forget to stop at the milestones in the journey to give thanks or praise, or even to stop and reassess how the journey is going.
When it comes to the death and grief over-culture in America, my sights are often set on what needs to be fixed, what goodness is possible, and where I would like to see our collective understanding of death, dying, and grief care. I’ll often use the phrasing ‘new paradigm death care’ like I’m putting a flag in the land of it and making a claim about what it is. Is it here? How bold of me! Are we there yet?
Recently I had a conversation with a well-known professional intuitive named Suzanne Jauchius. I learned about Suzanne in 2013 when I found her book You Know Your Way Home to be a page-turner that I couldn’t put down. It is her true story about her journey as a professional intuitive who eventually comes to be known as someone who finds missing people. How fascinated I was reading this book! Where does someone like Suzanne fit into our culture here in North America that is so bent towards logic and skepticism about unexplainable talents? In our recent conversation, I shared with Suzanne that I had been a little bit wearied over my own work’s journey and the snail-slow pace of the unfurling holistic end-of-life care movement. I explained that it sometimes feels like the work isn’t going anywhere. I admitted that even though I do trust the great unseen hand that guides this holistic death care movement, I sometimes still grow concerned that I may be plodding away with my death work for nothing.
Suzanne reminded me that she is seventy-five years old and that it took decades for people to take her work seriously. She told me stories about how she would give intuitive readings in peoples’ houses, driving all over god’s country to do so, and how she was a guest on a radio show for eight years, and still nobody really was taking her work to heart. She shared with me that she was a one-woman show, a single mother, with no financial support from anywhere, and that even though there were hardships, she couldn’t abandon her work because she was undeniably called to do her work. Going to get ‘a real job’ was out of the question for her. This is how many death carers feel about their work. I know they understand this just as much as I do. Suzanne then said to me, “You need to quit whining.” My response to that was a bellowing laugh. I had just been found out. I was complaining. Then she said to me, “Narinder, this work is going to take time. This death care work you are doing is where we are going, but it’s going to take time.”
There are times when we not only hear the words someone is saying but we also feel a divine pulse behind the message. That was how it felt when Suzanne said this to me, like a message that had fallen out of the stars and landed on the notepad where I was doodling hearts. Was I so consumed with the destination that I have rushed the journey?
I see the destination of the holistic death care movement. It looks like every person in this beautiful and confused society knowing all of their end-of-life care options. It looks like everyone knowing all of their funeral and burial choices. I imagine it looks like a majority of people choosing burial options that are gentle to the earth. I can see it as a time when unnecessarily embalming a body is taboo. Maybe this destination is a time when we all are aware of the ways in which different cultures talk about death and dying, how they care for their dying and their dead, and how they grieve and praise. Maybe the destination of this holistic end-of-life care movement is a place where every caregiver is fully prepared to care for their dying loved one and is absolutely supported in that care. Maybe at this destination point medical professionals are deeply supported in their work and not under the thumb of Big Brother and its ideas about health care as a business.
Perhaps the destination of this holistic end-of-life care movement is a mass awakening to the intelligence of grief. Maybe there, grief in its many tones, is understood, acknowledged, supported, and lifted up. I believe when grief reigns in its fullest expression, is felt and free to move, then love in its fullest expression is felt and free to move too. Who will we be when grief and love are completely reunited?
Admittedly, there have been many days, bogged down in the mire of late-stage corporate capitalism, keeping my own head above water, forgetting the beauty and grace I receive, that I have asked myself, about my death work, “Should I keep going? Should I keep encouraging other death carers? Do other death workers get discouraged with their work?” (I know they do.) And then there are most days, when I know how much this holistic death care movement has done already and I am amazed. We have a long way to go, but we’re going!
What happens if we do give this work time? What happens if we get on board with the idea that we are planting seeds for trees we may not see reach maturity? What happens if we become aware of the milestones in the progress we’re making with our work and stop to enjoy them?
I offer to my apprentices often, “This work takes consistency.” Never have I said, “This work is always easy and comes with quick results.” Consistency means different things for different people. It can have different paces and seasons. Consistency has cycles, yet in the ebbs and flows, there it is. A mass overnight awakening of death awareness hasn’t happened yet. Though, I think it’s safe to say that the terror that is inflicted on the Palestinians (as I write this) has ripped the curtains down, curtains we were hiding behind with our death phobia and addiction to comfort. This unveiling is putting a spotlight on our collective grief wounds. I have seen more grief support groups emerge in the past six months because of this mass grief crisis. Where do we put our gratitude for the Palestinian people? Maybe we show our gratitude by keeping up with our “new paradigm” callings that came at a time like this, in the world like this. Maybe we show our gratitude with our consistent efforts and praise for our death and grief work callings.
The death carers and grief workers out here are doing a phenomenal job as the harbingers of living in death and grief awareness. I am amazed at our tenacious loyalty to our work. I’m celebrating our milestones. I’m celebrating the fact that “grief awareness is trending.” I’m celebrating that more green burial cemeteries are becoming available. I’m overjoyed to hear that hospice groups are becoming educated about holistic death care. I’m inspired by the death workers who are changing the conversations about suicide loss, LBGTQIA+ death care, the many tones of grief, accessible death care, death education, and many other much-needed conversations. The general public has a huge blessing in the death carers emerging through the holistic death care movement. What if the death workers are the rainbows after the storms?
I’m immensely grateful to be a part of this team. And I’m thankful for my community who gives their attention to some of the things I feel called to say to us.
This work is going to take time. It may not reach the results we want to see in our lifetimes, and we still do the work. Our work is guided and supported by a universal force that has its own ideas about time.
I’m here for the long game. Are you?
Narinder Bazen
