March 15th, 2021

Leah's last day in her body on Mahashivaratri

I feel very restless, irritable and sad. Leah died two days ago. I couldn't believe how long, drawn out and dramatic it all was. How hard it was for me to stay present with the process. How many times I felt a screaming inside my head to DO something. As if I could stop it. As if I could change the outcome of her process. As it was, Leah died on Mahashivaratri, the most auspicious day of the year for Shiva Devotees. 

For seven days I thought she was dying. Every night Brian and I and Kala slept near her and everyday she rallied at some point. Every day Saskia and I face-timed and Leah responded to Saskia. She even started eating and drinking again - until the last 24 hours. I thought she had pulled through and she would see Saskia again this summer. 

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On Mahashivaratri morning I got fully dressed in a saree with rudraksha jewelry, vibhuti and kumkum to do my puja. Everything was clean and I had fresh roses. Leah's mobility only extended to about four feet and that morning she had only made it halfway out of the pet bed. But when I started the puja, she pulled herself out and lay just behind me. I felt this day was different, that Leah was in a different state. In retrospect, all the other seven days of dying were not actually death. But this day was different. Even I felt like I had entered another state of consciousness.

After my puja I opened Swamiji's "Living Enlightenment" and my eyes fell on a meditation on acceptance. Swamiji said accept everything happening in your outer world. Accept all of the qualities you have in your inner world. Accept all the things people think about you. Accept the worst things you think might happen. 

I closed my eyes and entered into the meditation. All my resistance broke down and I gulped in acceptance like I had been waiting lifetimes to finally drink these words. The thought rose up, "I am enough." It rose from the depths with a certainty I have never known.
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I left the room to take Kala out on a walk, and when I returned, Leah had moved to the corner of the puja area and put her head under a dark curtain for the final passing.

It's odd waiting for death. When my dad died, I was next to him for about the last hour, reciting the Psalm 27 and singing Christmas songs which my Dad had always loved. When his soul passed, it was seemingly silent, unobtrusive and not noticeable. But it was also a deafening roar because as his soul left the body, it expanded so hugely in the room that my own energy inside expanded with it. It was joyful and glorious, huge! The room and I were filled with ecstasy!

With Leah, I sat with her and entered her silence and felt the heaviness and confusion in her body. There was so much heaviness keeping her in her body. At the same time I could see part of her had started leaving the body, and it was also huge like my dad. I felt a presence, something was waiting. It made me think of Swamiji describing how he had seen Shiva taking the souls at Manikarnika Ghat, "He says ‘I saw very clearly Shiva himself going near every burning body, taking the soul, unclutching it from the body-mind and liberating it.'"

I was very agitated as the night progressed, snapping at Brian and Kala for any noise or disturbance. I felt compelled to sit straight in meditation near her. I fell asleep and woke with a start. She was still breathing. I sat in meditation and fell asleep again. Again I woke with a start. 1:27am. She was gone. I did not feel the hugeness or ecstasy. I felt relief but not expansion. I just wanted to sleep. 

I saw in the whole long process how she was less and less her body and more and more this big beautiful energy surrounding her body. By the time morning came, it was so clear that her body was nothing. No more than a garment. No more than the outer world that had held her. 

The burying ritual seemed odd in that she was not there. We were celebrating an empty body, the shell of her.

Leah had been initiated by Swamiji. She has the opportunity to take a human form in her next life. She has the opportunity for enlightenment.

This was the unbidden song  in my head the last two days; Diana Ross's version of "Ain't No Mountain High Enough" www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjCz_sUVZ5U