Diamond-Cut Life

How afraid are you of death, whether your own or that of someone you love? Because I feel certain of the soul living on after physical death, my fear has usually been of dying before I was certain I’d made a small but positive difference in the world.

That fear of leaving this world too early has abated as I’ve been doing paid work (in transportation options) and unpaid work (this blog) that address global warming and the overconsumption that drives it. Someone who I think got to leave this world at just the right time for her, with her life’s work complete, was my mother-in-law Joan Hinckley, who died two months ago.

We can see this physical world we’re living in, and just get glimpses of the next world, the unseen world, that we’ll all eventually go to. But I never knew that music could bridge the divide between the seen and unseen worlds until a harpist named Andrea walked quietly into the room at Providence Hospital here in Portland where my mother in law Joan was dying.

At first I thought Andrea was simply a chaplain, because she introduced herself as one. She inquired gently about Joan, and our family, and I sensed that like many ministers, she was carefully observing our cues, watching our faces and body language to see whether we preferred privacy or her presence.

We must have signaled openness, because after a bit, Andrea softly told us she played the harp, and might we and Joan like her to play her harp for us? We — my husband, nephew and sister in law — immediately said yes. We trusted that Joan, unconscious, would feel the same way.

At the first note, I felt something shift in my chest, and in the room. Everything relaxed and became softly vibrant. As Andrea plucked her harp, my breathing slowed and deepened. Our faces and bodies became still and rapt. At times she sang a bit along with the harp, and her low voice made the hospital room vibrate with yet more grace. It was as if the molecular structure of the room changed . . . . . definitely for the better.

I have had mystical experiences before in my life, and they are always hard to translate into words. The English language isn’t set up well for it; the old Aramaic language captures the nuances better (have you ever heard the Lord’s Prayer in Aramaic?). What Andrea explained to us is that she is a trained, certified music thanatologist, one of only 70 in the United States. Thanatology is the study of death and dying, and a music thanatologist uses music to help bridge this physical world that we can see with the next world, which we cannot.

When Joan died a few hours later, we asked Andrea to come and play again, which she did. “What a circle of love,” she said of our family. We felt sad but deeply peaceful and connected to each other. Andrea and her harp had guided Joan across the divide, and let us glimpse the world Joan’s soul had gone to. I think you would feel peace as well if you were in a room with such music, whatever your belief system — it transcends dogma or theology. Some things unite all of us.

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