Cheryl Eckl - A Beautiful Death: Facing the Future with Peace

Praise for
A Beautiful Death

A truly beautiful account of a truly beautiful death.

Ken Wilber , author,
Grace and Grit

In this skillfully crafted first-person account of her profound healing journey, Cheryl Eckl provides wise guidance to help each of us face lifes inevitable losses with creative compassion and messy, elegant grace.

Mark Brady, Ph.D ., author,
The Wisdom of Listening and Right Listening

A gem of inspiration and wisdom. Whether you are a family member, friend, or caregiver of a loved one who is passing on, these real-life lessons can help you love, heal, and experience each other more deeply. As much about how to live fully as how to let go gracefully, A Beautiful Death is a precious and indispensable guide to making our final journey through life a fulfilling voyage of resolution, discovery, and promise.

Patricia Spadaro , author,
Honor Yourself: The Inner Art of Giving and Receiving

Cheryl Eckl writes beautifully about the transformative power of her husbands final journeyof experiencing lifes deepest joys while facing lifes deepest sorrows. She shares a profound and universal message of hope while chronicling her intensely personal story.

Bev Sloan , President and CEO,
The Denver Hospice

Cheryl Eckl is doing the work of a Warrior in the World. A Beautiful Death does far more than simply honor those of our beloveds who have passed; it is a sacred vessel that provides healing, equanimity, acceptance, and rest for all of those who have lost or are losing another. In fact, after exploring Cheryls profound work, we find that we have not lost anything at all.

Brandon P. Thompson , Global Faculty,
Institute of Transpersonal Psychology

For those with cancer and those who love and care about people with cancer, this book is an invaluable resource to help people face the hard realities, cope with the physical, emotional, and spiritual pain, and move toward a more positive and constructive outlook.

John J. Horan , Chairman of the Board,
The Denver Hospice

Copyright 2010 by Cheryl Eckl. All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used, reproduced, translated, electronically stored, or transmitted in any manner whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher, except by reviewers, who may quote brief passages in their reviews.

For information address:
Flying Crane Press
P. O. Box 355
Littleton, CO 80160-0355
E-mail: info@flyingcranepress.com

For foreign and translation rights, contact Nigel J. Yorwerth.
E-mail: nigel@publishingcoaches.com

Library of Congress Control Number: 2010931352

ISBN: 978-0-9828107-0-5

Cover design: Nita Ybarra
Interior design: Alan Barnett

Distributed by SCB Distributors

The information and insights in this book are solely the opinion of the author and should not be considered as a form of therapy, advice, direction, diagnosis, and/or treatment of any kind. This information is not a substitute for medical, psychological, or other professional advice, counseling, or care. All matters pertaining to your individual health should be supervised by a physician or appropriate health-care practitioner. Neither the author nor the publisher assumes any responsibility or liability whatsoever on behalf of any purchaser or reader.

For Stephen

CONTENTS

A Note to the Reader: You Can Do This

Part One A BEAUTIFUL LIFE

1 The Heart Must Break

2 Searching for My Anam ara

3 Hes the One

4 Two Hearts Make a Whole

5 Please, Make It Obvious

6 The Best Years of Our Lives

Part Two ROUGH WATER

7 Shocks

8 Playing the Odds

9 Cancer Is Not Us

10 Surfing the Waves

11 Putting Cancer Behind Us

12 A Two-Part Mission

13 Why Not Us?

Part Three MIDWIFE TO THE SOUL

14 A Year of Lasts, 1

15 A Year of Lasts, 2

16 A Promise to Keep

17 Accepting What Is

18 Running the Race

19 Approaching Death

Part Four THE OPEN DOOR

20 In His Own Way

21 What Do the Signs Say?

22 Through the Doorway

23 The Genuine Heart of Joy

24 With Sheer Determination

25 The Postcard from Heaven

26 Touching Bottom

Part Five PILGRIMAGE

27 The Middle Place

28 Thin as Gossamer

29 Lost in My Story

30 Dark Nights of Eire

31 The Encounter

32 The Return

33 A Gift of Peace

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

Reservoirs of Life

How Have I Been Prepared?

How Am I Staying Afloat?

What Do I Need Right Now?

What Do I Need to Let Go Of?

Where Do I Go from Here?

Acknowledgements

Notes

Death Can Be Beautiful When...

All spiritual seeking is aimed at awakening us
in order to know one thing and only one thing:
birth and death can never touch us
in any way whatsoever.

Thich Nhat Hanh

A Note to the Reader:
You Can Do This

There is a Power whose care
Teaches thy way along the pathless coast,
The desert and illimitable air,
Lone wandering, but not lost.

William Cullen Bryant

Someone is dying. And for all concerned, life will never be the same.

You cannot comprehend the impact death will have on your life until you meet it face to face. Until you sit with it a while. Until you watch it hovering for yearsor perhaps for just an instant. Until you feel the nothingness it leaves behind as it steals away with your beloved. Even then, you may not really know deathbut I believe you need to try. I also believe you have the inner resources to face it, even if you dont know that you do. I learned that from my mother when my father passed away, and she had learned it years earlier from her friends in the Arizona retirement community where they lived.

How could you be so calm and in control? she had asked a courageous woman who had recently lost her husband. Im afraid I would just fall apart.

You wont, her friend had answered without hesitation. The strength will be there when you need it. I dont know exactly how it happens, but you will be sustained.

And it was true. When my father died after a long illness, my mother was calm, poised, organized, and capable. Her collectedness was truly inspiring, and she gave me a powerful role model to follow when my husband, Stephen, passed away.

When we faced his imminent death from colon cancer, we were often surprised by the strength we felt from our own inner reserves as well as from the prayers of family and friends. We were also amazed to encounter less fear for ourselves than for each other. I was afraid Stephen would suffer, and he was afraid I would be lost without him. What we did not fear was death itself. He had faith in a loving afterlife, and I believed I could help him get there.

Facing deatheither your own or that of someone you lovecan be the worst thing that ever happens to you. It can also be your most important life experience because of what it teaches you about love and compassion, about serving another person in the hour of greatest need, about the resilience of the human heart, and about the unimaginable blessings that can flow to you and through you if you accept death as a natural part of life.

Ever since I was a child, I had looked at my existence as a continuum that moves from this life on to what philosopher William James called something more. If it was Stephens destiny to die young, as I tend to believe it was, he could not have picked a better partner than me because I was more inclined to the ethereal than the physical, and much preferred the realm of imagination, where my mind could soar, to the material where, as I was a sickly child, my body often failed me.