Below is a passage that appears in our Fall 2015 newsletter from Michael Engelhart, a Life Source Services hospice volunteer.
As I work with more and more Hospice friends, I notice that many do not remember seemingly important details of their lives and generally remembers one to three periods that they speak about each time I visit.
Thomas Merton said, ‘Every moment and every event of every man’s life on earth plants something in his soul.” Perhaps the clients I visit have cultivated (consciously or unconsciously) a capacity that lessens the need for memories; and the many seeds planted have been brought to these precious few to awaken a soul in transition.
I believe that these previous few memories represent love. Love of God, for oneself, and for life. As death approaches, blindness, fear, the body’s betrayal and weariness are the physical body and ego dying; and at last, there is only one thing to remember – love.
Maybe our dying day ends with one last memory, that of a full expression of life at transition that finally results in freedom from all but love.