Unable to move on, I will repeat the words of Frank Ostaseski that contain three things to know and cultivate around this subject of dying.
1. There is a labor to dying. Learn to be compassionately present with suffering.
2. We need to cultivate a willingness to release ourselves and others from roles. Release father, mother, son, daughter, parent, worker, child, and more. I thought of those. You come up with yours. What roles can each of us release?
3. We need an abiding confidence in the process of dying as growth. We need to trust that we are not the separate self that we think ourselves to be.
Tova Green, a hospice chaplain volunteer, spoke next. She began by reading Jane Hirshfield's poem Ripeness. She reads it to those she comforts. Jane didn't know she did that, and was touched to learn how her poem helps those who are dying.
Ah, I see that my friend Amrita Skye Blaine has this poem on her blog with a photo from Panhala.
Read this poem, and see why I need to pause:
http://theheartofthematter-dailyreminders.org/2013/03/28/ripeness-by-jane-hirshfield/