Many cultures and traditions tell us that death and dying is a process of returning home - home to our loved ones, home to the earth, home to our ancestors, home to whatever or whomever created us, home to where we are loved and where we belong.

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I think of aging and dying like winter. It is a season of life. It is not my favourite season, but it is important and necessary. There is huge value in slowing down, in noticing the quiet beauty in ourselves and the world around us, in noticing what is still and what has softened. In winter, you get cosy, you rug up warm, you invite just a few good friends over, and you find unexpected pleasures in the bare trees and grey skies. While I love summer, I do not want it to be summer all the time. We - and nature - need the seasons to change. It is ok to be old and to die. It is not wrong.

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Death and dying link us to all of creation. They allow us to have a deep sense of connection and belonging with all living things - with our whole Earth. We are not separate. We are just one part of a larger system of living and dying that happens to everyone and everything. Death and dying show us that we are embedded within, and belong to, Mother Nature.

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I think about all of the people in my family tree going back hundreds and thousands of years. All of them have lived and all of them have died. If they had not lived AND if they had not died, I would not have had the chance to be here. When I die, I will be part of a long chain of living and dying. By dying, I will be making space for the next links - the new people, the new generations - to have their time for living and dying. My dying connects me to my past and is a contribution to the future.

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As we slowly age and die, we are releasing resources and clearing the way for new possibility—time and space for others to step forward. Time and space for new ideas and new opportunities. Time and space for those we leave behind to use what we have helped to create in new ways that suit them.

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Becoming the Ocean – by Khalil Gibran

It is said that before entering the sea
A river trembles with fear.
She looks back at the path she has travelled, from the peaks of the mountains, the long winding road crossing forests and villages.
And in front of her, she sees an ocean so vast, that to enter there seems nothing more than to disappear forever.
But there is no other way.
The river cannot go back.
Nobody can go back.
To go back is impossible in existence.
The river needs to take the risk of entering the ocean because only then will fear disappear—because that’s where the river will know it’s not about disappearing into the ocean, but of becoming the ocean.

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In the end, we cannot control aging or dying. We have to let go a bit and just go with it—without being in the driver’s seat. There is freedom and relief in not having to know everything or be in charge or in control of everything. Maybe ‘letting go a bit’ can look and feel like dancing. Just moving with the beat and rhythm of life—instead of having to be the composer, and the musician, and the DJ all at once.

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For me, it is about holding hands. I think most of us imagine holding hands with someone as we die, and we reach out to hold the hands of people who are ill or suffering. That is so important. It doesn’t need to be any bigger or any more complicated than that. Just holding hands. When I think of that, it reminds me to keep focused on people and connections and relationships. The reward will be that I get to hold hands with people who matter to me when the time comes for me to start releasing the trappings of this thing we call life. I hope that lots of my time as an old lady will be spent holding hands with people - reaching out to give and receive quiet comfort.

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Knowing that I don’t have all the time in the world, and everything will come to an end, helps me find the courage to be brave enough to break open my heart, to say and do what really matters, and to let tears and laughter flow.

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When we are ill or old or dying, we give other people the opportunity to care for us. There is beauty and value in this—not just for us, but for our whole society. It is a wonderful gift to practice, honour, and make time and space for caring. When we embrace our childlikeness and weaknesses, we allow others to demonstrate their love and their strengths.

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Death and aging are an opening to the sacred and the mystical. They help us to be in awe of what is greater than us and what we cannot comprehend.

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Dying and aging give us a deep motivation for forgiveness and reconciliation. How we die has an impact on those we leave behind. When we die with less fear and less shame - and more forgiveness, gratitude, humility, and love - this is a great gift to those we leave behind. This is the purposeful and meaningful work we can do as we age and die: leaving a legacy of forgiveness and reconciliation; breaking cycles of trauma and fear; building cycles of hope, joy, and forgiveness.

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Aging is the discovery of deeper wisdom. Each year brings us closer to who we’ve always meant to be.

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Death tells us that we are not stuck. We are not captured by one moment or one way of being or in this particular suffering and pain. There will always be movement and change. We are always on a journey. While babies are lovely, it is also good that we don’t stay stuck as babies forever. We change, develop, learn, and change across our lives (in ways that are painful and hard, as well as exciting and joyful). Caterpillars turn into butterflies. One is not better than the other. Transformation is not easy. It is a dissolving of one state into another. But the end result is that we don’t stay stuck. We will not have to struggle forever. We will be unstuck. We will change. There will be new parts to our journey.

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Dying simply; letting go and allowing myself to die; and burying my body as naturally as possible is a contribution I want to make to the wellbeing of our environment and the richness of our soil. It is giving back to the earth.

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What if we imagine death not as a final door that shuts behind us, but as a doorway opening to something beyond our understanding?

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When a seed turns into a plant, it has to totally transform. It has to turn itself inside out. It has to shed everything that looks like being a seed. When a caterpillar turns into a butterfly, it totally dissolves. It sheds its entire caterpillar nature to become a butterfly. I imagine that these transformations are hard - but they are not wrong. It is the same when we are dying. We are leaving behind everything that we know as ‘us’ to transform into something new. We can let go. The transformation will happen to us. It is ok.

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I am made up of elements that come from the stars and have been around for billions of years. When I die, all the bits of me - the traces of gold, the carbon, the water, the proteins and microbes - all of it will be available to become part of new creations. Perhaps parts of me will end up as elements within a tree, a river, an earthworm, a bird, a wildflower, a new human, a new star… No matter what, the stuff that makes me up will be part of a cycle of energy and living for billions of years to come.

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Just as the seasons change, and the sun rises and sets, death is an inevitable and natural part of the rhythm of life.

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Death invites us to let go in the most profound way - transforming fear into curiosity, loss into love, and the unknown into something creative and awesome.

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I take great comfort from stories of people’s near-death experiences. Nearly all of them say the same thing: “It’s better there.” More peaceful. Everything negative left behind. There is a sense of really belonging, of being home. There is unconditional love unlike anything we experience here. This gives me hope that whatever our struggles and difficulties here in life, something better awaits.