Blue Heron Visions: Chapter 21: The Fear of Death or the Death of Fear?

This manuscript is both a memoir of sorts and a work of fiction. The stories and events included are based on my life experiences and memories but I have changed names, details, event sequences, and outcomes throughout the work.

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Chapter 21: The Fear of Death or the Death of Fear?

Another February day peeked through the bedroom curtains, awakening Elizabeth slowly from a dream reverie. Once fully awake, she got up immediately, no thinking, and went to the kitchen to prepare her breakfast. As she busied herself with making her oatmeal, she noticed again that she hadn't heard her next door neighbor closing her cabinet doors for several weeks. Elizabeth remembered that just few days ago, she had also seen a moving truck removing items from an apartment on the ground floor. Elizabeth wondered if it could be from her neighbor's apartment. Later that same evening, she had mentioned her observations to Vincent, wondering if perhaps the woman had died. Vincent had replied that perhaps the woman had needed to move into a retirement or rest home. He recalled that he had once seen the older woman on the back stairs, moving extremely slowly and breathing very hard, rasping with each breath. Elizabeth had only had brief glimpses of the woman, maybe once or twice, and never outside of the apartment building. Elizabeth had also noticed that the local pharmacy made regular deliveries to the woman's apartment.

Elizabeth's thoughts returned to her breakfast. She decided she would venture outside immediately after she finished her breakfast, not stopping to read email, make a mandala, or write her morning pages. She felt the urge to be outside and was already longing for the warmth and regeneration of spring, even though vernal equinox was more than a month away.

Just after exiting the building, Elizabeth noticed that the concierge of the apartment building was doing his daily snow shoveling and general clean up. She stopped to talk with Gilles and mentioned her concern about the neighbor. Gilles told her that the woman had died a few weeks before. She had fallen in the bathroom, broken her hip, and had been taken to the hospital in an ambulance. She had died in the hospital and her family eventually came to pack up her personal effects and move them out of the apartment. He mentioned that the woman had lived in the apartment building for perhaps forty years, living first with her husband and then continuing her sojourn when her husband had died. Elizabeth was amazed. The woman and her husband must have moved in shortly after the apartments were built. Elizabeth thanked Gilles for the information and wished him a good day—“Bonne journée!”

As she began her walk, Elizabeth's thoughts focused on the woman and her death. She felt sad that a life so close in proximity to where she was had left the world and that she had never really known the woman, other than by the sound of kitchen cupboards closing. She thought of the solitariness of the woman, how Gilles had said her family didn't visit and that the woman didn't really want anyone coming into her apartment. Elizabeth sighed, thinking of the loneliness and invisibility the woman perhaps had experienced. “Who had acknowledged her existence?” Elizabeth wondered. Elizabeth sighed and noticed another feeling welling up inside of her: fear.

Elizabeth took a deep breath and continued walking. The fear thoughts started crashing through her mind, creating scenarios about sickness and death:

--“What would happen if I had a heart attack right now? I could die right here where no one knows me and where no one can help me. Remember Maurice, Vincent's uncle? He dropped dead while mowing the lawn, and he was only eight years older than I am.”

--“I could die at any moment. Both of my parents died young—52 and 66. Maybe it's in my genes.”

--“Could that pain in my hip be cancer? What if it is? I could be facing immense suffering ending in a painful death!”

--“What about that spot I noticed on my skin? Could that be skin cancer? Remember that neighbor's friend who found a small spot that disappeared and the man died a year or so later at the age of forty-five! The same thing could happen to me! I could be ill right now and not know it!”

The thoughts kept coming, one after the other; the stories became more and more dramatic; but each had a common theme—the fear of death and dying.

Elizabeth became aware of her racing heart and shallow breathing as her body responded to the onslaught of fearful thoughts over which she seemed to have no control. She tried to calm herself down by countering with rational thoughts like:

--“Everyone is dying every day. If I believe that all time is happening at the same time, then I have already experienced death.”

--“My parents may have died at younger ages, but two of my grandparents lived into their eighties and Nonna lived to be over ninety.”

--“There are strong painkillers doctors use when people are dying so they don't experience so much pain.”

--“I ride my bicycle a lot and walk almost daily and I eat pretty healthily most of the time.”

But as quickly as Elizabeth could create a thought that counteracted one fearful story, another thought would emerge to counteract hers. She was fighting a war in her mind, and somehow the fearful thoughts always seemed to be stronger than her rational thoughts.

Elizabeth felt her mind spiraling out of control. She took a deep breath and attempted to put all of her attention on walking, knowing that focusing on exercise would sometimes alleviate the stress of the fearful thinking. She wondered why she still had these fears about death. She thought she had dealt with the fear of death and dying over the past few years—each time a family member or friend had died. For some reason, though, the neighbor's death had brought it back to the forefront of her thoughts. What could she do to eliminate this fear once and for all? Was that even possible?

Elizabeth recalled a quotation by Guy Finley she had read in her email the day before: “The mind, emptied of its attachments, fears nothing...while the mind full of itself spends its time fearfully watching over everything.” When Elizabeth read the quote, she felt that she finally had an answer to why she thought she had to guard against every possibility in her life. Her mind was “full of itself.” At first, she saw the phrase as signifying that her mind was literally filled and overflowing with thoughts. But she also knew that the expression described the condition of the ego mind that believed its thoughts were superior to and more valuable than anyone else's thoughts, including those of the Higher Self, whose thoughts, Elizabeth believed, flowed directly from the Mind of God/Source/the Universe.

Despite her attention being focused on the quotation, Elizabeth could still feel the fear inside. She considered the first part of the quotation. She understood that her mind needed to be emptied not of thoughts it seemed but of its attachments to those thoughts. Elizabeth wondered if that meant it wasn't the thoughts themselves but her attachment to them that created the problem. “Why would I be so attached to those types of thoughts? Of what value are they?” Elizabeth asked herself.

Considering these questions, she turned toward her apartment. Sometimes she thought feeling the fear that resulted from her scary thoughts actually made some part of her feel more alive. That part wanted her to imagine and become attached to dramatic future outcomes rather than being present to life as it unfolded. That part, also known as ego, used the uncontrolled fearful thoughts Elizabeth allowed and the resulting emotions and physical reactions she experienced to give itself a life. Those ego thoughts covered over and, at times, blotted out any other thoughts, much like a painted background would cover the pure canvas of her All That Is analogy.

“How can I let go of these attachments?” she wondered. Elizabeth thought of a video she had seen recently. The woman who taught meditation was talking about sadness and how meditation didn't try to alleviate sadness but gave one a space to sit with it, to let sadness exist without resisting it or the feelings that came as a result of it. Elizabeth wondered if the death of fear could result from practicing the same process, not necessarily by using meditation, but when the fear thoughts came, Elizabeth could stop trying to fight them or attempting to reason with them.

The idea of sitting with fear created fearful thoughts. Elizabeth actually smiled at the irony. How could not doing anything but letting the thoughts come unrestricted bring any kind of peace? She already knew that her fearful thoughts could run through her mind at breakneck speed, so how could allowing them to do what they did best possibly slow them down or stop them? Perhaps the answer to that question was found in whether she attached herself to the thoughts by attributing truth to them or by seeing them as a present moment reality.

Though she doubted that sitting with her thoughts would help, Elizabeth was willing to try anything if it would stop her spiraling into the fearful abyss from which it took days and even weeks, at times, to emerge. She certainly knew the much-used adage, “What you resist, persists.” Could letting go be as easy as not resisting her thoughts but just allowing them to sit with her, to allow them to express themselves but not to assist them in creating stories about her future? Elizabeth didn't know. She supposed she would have to try the next time she felt fear's grasp on her heart and mind.

As she arrived back at the apartment building, Elizabeth definitely felt more peace than she had at the beginning of her walk. She was thankful that the fear thoughts were somewhat under control. “I wonder if fear hampers my ability to embrace life and see its magic,” she wondered. The thought floated quickly through her mind as she again thought of her neighbor who had died. Elizabeth sent up a quick prayer to the Universe, asking that the woman's final journey would be one of peace bringing her soul into the Heart of God.