Reciprocal Care, Dreaming and the Dead

Sometimes the dying leave us with life-changing gifts. I cared for a woman as her doula for about a year and that night she died, I wasn’t with her, but it turns out, I woke up the moment of her death with a deep sense of peace and understanding of love and of myself. I think I must have been able to see myself as she saw me, with pure love. The next morning, I woke up and stepped outside and the light felt differently. A red dragon fly hovered around my face.

While she was alive, her mothering and her devotion brought me closer to my devotion to the Divine Mother. When she died, I started praying the rosary to support her in her transition and since then, I haven’t stopped. I went to my first rosary circle, and on my drive there as I was thinking of her, a street by her name appeared.

I believe that the people I care for as they are dying stay with me long after they are gone. I care for them and later, they care for me. I believe I’m brought to the people I am meant to for higher reasons unknown and me to them. We have soul contracts just as any other special relationship and so I hold my work as sacred, and with responsibility to this relationship.

I say this also with acknowledgement that the person is not a mirror or a metaphor. I go not only to receive but because my heart’s calling is to be with them on their journey of transition, of their becoming.