Given that death is a taboo subject in our culture, it was not surprising to find some friends and family unwilling to talk about it, let alone make a point of saying goodbye for the last time. Quite early in this process we decided that we wanted to be alone together at the time of my death. We can make Divine contact when we are alone together; other people inhibit this. And the only way I could imagine saying goodbye to Eva was in Divine contact with her – even then it will be heartbreakingly sad.. So I wanted to say goodbye to all our friends and family ahead of the time I might be close to death. What follows desscribes how we handled this.

Family

Prior to my 80th birthday (in 2024) we had all our children and their partners, but without their children, come for a weekend with us at home. We had a couple of meetings and also celebrated my imminent birthday with a party together. At our first meeting I explained what i wanted in terms of the time of dying. I didn’t want them to feel rejected by not being with me, so I explained in some detail what I wanted. At the second meeting Eva and I explained our financial poosition and what we planned to do after my death. We needed them to all understand what we were planning and to agree to one of them, my youngest son, handling probate and being Eva’s financial adviser. There were really good discussions at both meetings and the end result was a shared understanding and agreement about what would happen.

Engaging in a process of saying goodbye to the children has been different with each of them. I did a Dying Dyad with two of them and this was definitely the most satisfactory for me. I am also aware that they will be amongst those most profoundly affected by me dying – and that is difficult to acknowledge and accommodate.

Friends

Throughout the time I have known I was dying I have regularly consulted my wise man for advice. On one occasion he suggested that I should write to all the people I wanted to thank or apologise to as this would make it easier for me later. My close friends knew I was dying, but the emails I sent to friends I had not seen for years also let them know that I was dying. The responses I received were overwhelming. All the respondents, in their turn, thanked and apologised to me. Some came to see me in person. It was probably the most beautiful and amazing process I have had in my life – thank you to my wise man!

Among the friends who cam to say goodbye in person, those with whom I shared a Dying Dyad were the most satisfactory. Some of them had not done a dyad before, and were amazed at how the simple instructions and taking it in turns worked so beautifully.

One friend, John Doggart, with whom I worked in the 1970’s urged me to write a book about the work I did then. I declined on the grounds that I could not imagine anyone wanting to read such a book. He went away and found a way to create a short film about our work together. Here is a link to it https://youtu.be/z62bSrVZnoM?si=5g9yDkicHimu_hQR . In turn this movie has prompted more people to contact me to say goodbye and share their feelings about our times together.