Making Meaning out of Passing Loved Ones, November 2011

By Carol Harris-Fike, NCOC, PCC and author of "5 Life Energies: The Choice You Have in How Energy Shapes Your Life" ©2009.

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Two more people who were close to me or someone in my family have passed in the last month. This brings the number to five for 2011 and I'm pondering the meaning of it all for me. Is it my age and what I should prepare myself to experience more and more? Is this my year to learn some deep meaning around death? Is this just "life happening"? How can my coaching distinctions serve me and those around me?

Importance of Celebration of Life

In October I experienced the passing of two more beautiful lives from this Earth. One was the brother of my sister-in-law who died very unexpectedly.

The other was, Alma, my dear friend and coaching colleague from England. Many, many people will miss her. One part of her work over the years has been to lead groups of impoverished women to realize their power and worth. I am honored to have known her for five short and precious years.

When someone close to you passes, it seems you find traces of him or her everywhere. I had just learned of Alma's death when on the next day Rich and I decided to sort through our library. (It was about time as we had shoved books haphazardly on the shelves two years ago when we moved into our current home!?) I discovered a leather folder between some coach training notebooks on a bottom shelf. Thinking it was a diploma of some kind; I opened it to discover a group photo of the coaching class where Alma and I first met. We were lying on the floor very close together to allow all 30 participants to be in the picture. Alma had gorgeous blonde curls, and at the time I did also. (Not sure of the gorgeous part, but blonde curls none-the-less.) Last week I got curls again in her honor and I'm sure Alma is laughing at me from somewhere "up there"! I continued to find memories of Alma in the next few days... a file on my computer popped up unexpectedly with her name on it and on and on. Isn't it interesting how these things happen when someone close to us moves on? I don't believe it is an accident; I believe it is a way of remembering and celebrating a life. I believe that the memory "tweaks" happen as reminders for us to celebrate the lives of others.

Importance of Closure

In late August I learned that my former husband had passed. There were, of course, good years in our marriage and we had some dear friends and fond memories from those years. I desired to find a way to bring some closure to this finality and so it came to me to ask our closest friends, a couple in Texas, to join Rich and me in remembering Bill through a telephone conversation one evening. We all had a glass of wine in our hands as Dane asked questions that led us to sharing deeply about the "best of Bill" and our appreciation of his life. I might have skipped this deep experience if I had not listened to my intuition to take action for closure.

Importance of Letting Go

I wrote previously about "Letting Go of My Story of my Mother to allow my memories to include all of her, the best of her. (Go to Letting Go to find the early summer issue with this story.) That experience has served me so well that I'm no longer tempted to fall back into the old stories. My dreams and thoughts of Mother are peaceful and even joyful and my grieving process is not stagnating... a true blessing. I might be truly stuck in guilt and sadness if I had not let that old, practiced story go.

Importance of Shifting Life Energies to Take These Three Actions

The idea that we can shift our body to shift our emotions and thoughts is what allowed me to take these three actions. Moving into Air Energy allowed me the flexibility to move from the sadness into the wonder around the gifts each person had given to this world. Sadness may be found when the body is in Stability where the thoughts may be, "I should be sad or I can't move from sadness, I might move into a mood of resignation. I might have stayed in Fire Energy where the thoughts might have been, "Why this person? Why now? It isn't fair..." and on and on; a mood of resentment. Air Energy allows the flexibility to not attach and stay with only one thought but to examine it rather quickly and then possibly to let it go so other thoughts of possibilities may come.

"What you think of as an impossible dream might be reasonable if you thought differently. Awakening, in a sense, is realizing that there are other possibilities."

-Harry Palmer

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