Death That Brings Healing

Since the death of my husband just over two months ago (as I type), I have a new hypothesis about healing and wholeness: Repairing wounds at the level of Spirit requires some people to shed the body they inhabit.

In addition, this type of release offers healing to those remaining because, yes, at our core, we really are all one. Temporarily human, permanently divine.

Many of us carry psychological wounding in our bodies. My husband Tim grew up in a horrifyingly abusive home, and the scars from that upbringing were deep. He strove to create a centered existence all 36 years I knew him, first as a friend then as my husband. He also carried heavy baggage that he could never quite bring himself to put down.

So many emotional wounds never truly healed, though he helped countless others mend theirs, including me. It reminds me we are often masterful at teaching the things we most need to learn ourselves.

Preparing for the Path

For most of our 16 years as a couple, illness, diagnosis, and healing were a repeating pattern. In 2019 heart issues led to surgery, infection, and a yearlong journey through pain, prayer, and transformation. As 2020 brought Covid-19, it delivered us a chance to take stock and make new choices.

In hindsight, I can see it was in fact a time of preparation. Home renovation, debt elimination—it seemed we finally had our proverbial ducks in a row. Maybe we did; they just didn’t go where we thought they would once they lined up.

There are days of deep mourning, and allowing myself to dive in cleanses me and allows me to grow and evolve through my pain.

It fascinates me how Source always anticipates precisely what we will need for the road ahead, then puts it squarely in our path. It simply falls to us to follow the signposts, though many of them only become clear when viewed in the rearview mirror.

The news that Tim had terminal cancer brought us to a screeching halt, then a month went by so fast that we were still trying to find our footing when Tim left his body. Those last weeks may have birthed my new view, but his last seconds are what gave it life.

We were holding hands. Our eyes locked as we said, “I love you,” then I watched the most breathtaking aha! dawn and spread across his face—just before he blew through me with such an exhilaratingly joyous force that it altered every cell of my body at a level I may never fully grasp.

I was in such a state of intense awe that it took the group of medical staff pouring into the room for me to realize that, in fact, I had just witnessed his death.

Evolving Through Pain

I know with every fiber of my being that his last breath brought the healing that had eluded him, and that he exhaled into wholeness, blissfully releasing the body that by that point had become superfluous. In that moment, it seemed blasphemous to be sad. There has been plenty of sadness since, however, and rivers of tears. Beautiful memorials and heartbreaking loss.

And.

What a powerful word and life-altering philosophy the word and can be, if only we have the bravery to embrace it. It is one of the things Tim’s life taught me. He has shed his skin, and now his earthly limitations are gone.

I miss him terribly, and I am a part of the Allness that he is still a part of too. There are days of deep mourning, and allowing myself to dive in cleanses me and allows me to grow and evolve through my pain. I may feel alone at times, and I never really am.

Because he lived and died, exactly as he did, his unique contributions created ripples that reach far beyond him, and I will do everything I can to make those ripples grow.

Excerpted from In the Flow of Healing, a booklet from Unity.