“When people are dying they need intensive care.

Intensive love, intensive compassion, intensive presence. Ultimately spiritual support is not a matter of existential teachings or esoteric practices. It is the fearless commitment to honor the individual’s way of meeting death and to stay still in the territory of unanswerable questions.”

-Frank Osasteski, Zen Hospice Project

By the time my dad passed away six months ago, I had thankfully learned the art of giving intensive love, compassion and presence that Frank Osasteski refers to in the above quote. 

The kind of intensive caring that my dad was so deserving of as he was dying. Intensive compassion that I gave him during his last conscious days in hospital. And intensive love in the moment he took his final breath.

Like having a child, nothing in life can prepare you for a parent’s death.

Yet, looking back, I realize there were so many teachers that had been preparing me for this event–even as I had no idea that I was being prepared for it.

And perhaps the most generous and powerful teacher of them all, has been my daughter.

You see, my child has allowed me to be close, time and again, during her many moments of loss. Moments of big fear and pain, which I now understand to be “little deaths”. And in doing so, she has given me countless opportunities to practice truly being with another as they bravely move through their hardest, scariest and most difficult moments.

And she prepared me in other ways, too. I can’t deny that is entirely because of her existence that I ever sought out the teachings, the teachers and the practices that would allow me to be able to provide this kind of caring to others.

No fixing. No talking. No advice. No rushing. 

Just the kind of caring that sees, listens and loves.

It never crossed my mind during the many times that I held my crying baby, in such a way that she might know with all of her being that I could hold whatever was hurting inside of her–that I was preparing myself to offer the same steadfast closeness and holding to my dad as tears rolled from his eyes in his last conscious hours.

I think this is what Osasteski refers to as “the fearless commitment to honor the individual’s way of meeting death and to stay still in the territory of unanswerable questions.”

But you see, it wasn’t only the many episodes of holding space for my daughter that prepared me in this way. 

It was also the kind of journey of motherhood that she inspired me to embark on; a journey full of intention and commitment to my own healing and growth. 

And while I am generally resistant to talking about the idea of “being healed”, a wiser part of me wants to name today, that I have healed SO MUCH of the wounding that used to cause me to shut down, overfunction or hide away in the face of anyone’s deep pain. Including my own.

And it is because of this, that by the time my dad went, I had healed enough to be with him, and help him to know that he was not alone as he carried the painful burden of his body shutting down. To lean in close to his face, as I translated frightening and sobering news from the doctors from English to Spanish. To demand better care when nurses and doctors who apparently had their sensitivities to human life turned off, seemed to forget that the person under their “care” was a living and present human being.

And it was because of being my child’s parent, and seeing how easily she can rest in receiving care from the people she is meant to receive it from, that I had also given myself the opportunity to rest in being my dad’s daughter in the final years of his life.

You see, my dad had done a lot of work on himself. He had gone to therapy. He collected a considerable collection of self-help and introspective books. He did not agree with institutionalized religion, but he read scripture discreetly, and mentioned here or there to my mother that he could feel that God was always holding him. 

If you are a healing parent, I invite you to take note of the following things that he did in his final years, to transform our deeply strained relationship into a close, connected, healing and healed one…

• When I assumed he had been disappointed in me because of my separation, he told me that he was proud of me for leaving a marriage that did not make me happy,

• When I was afraid to make it on my own, he reassured me that he knew that I could–but that everyone needs a little bit of help when they start out, and that he was there to help,

• He told me that my peace was precious, and to never lose sleep over anything before calling to ask for his help,

• He said that people might try and tell me what is best for me, but that only I could be the one to know that,

• He said that he admired me and could appreciate my decision to start my own business, doing what I love and being my own boss,

• He had apologized for not understanding the value of my career path early on, and said that now he thought I had figured out what was most important in life, and that he admired that. 

I don’t know if he had read a formula for repair or accountability in one of the many self-help books he had accumulated. I can’t be sure what led my dad to find the words I so badly needed to hear from him.

But I am certain that I have never experienced a more powerful example of the healing effects of a parent’s genuine willingness to repair the relationship with their child.

And like our children, who turn away from us at times when we finally manage to apologize for our messy tempers and hurtful attitudes, it took me some time to decide to let my dad in when he first attempted to mend our relationship.

You see, I had practically stopped speaking to him from the age of 11 through my mid twenties.

And so it felt risky to let myself truly rest in his care and be his daughter, in that vulnerable and open way that my own child has shown me is possible.

But because I eventually opened, and because he did, we had experienced many healing moments of deep presence together by the time he went. 

Moments of sitting together for long stretches of time, and doing something we had never done in any of my previous memories–look up from what we were doing and meet each other’s eyes with silent appreciation for a few seconds, and then return to the tv in front of us, the phone, a book or the Costco catalog that is a staple in my parent’s home.

You see, healing is happening all the time, right now, in even the most ordinary of moments. And it sometimes takes the most extraordinary, life-altering experiences to notice just how much we have healed.

How much closer we are to our hearts and to the hearts of those we love.

And how, as James Finley writes, “On the path to eternal fulfillment, which never ends, we all die as beginners.” 

We will all need to be held with intensive caring when our day comes sooner or later, just as we are learning to hold our little ones now. 

We will all be like babies again, preparing to enter a realm that requires us to leave behind all that we know. 

And we all have the chance to graciously welcome the many teachers that will help us to love more, and receive love more, as we make our way.

Together. One, little or big, moment of connection at a time.