Nearly a year ago, Michael, my cousin Alice’s husband of nearly 30 years, passed away, four years after he was diagnosed with a rare lung cancer. Lately, I have been thinking about how he left this world gracefully and generously, and so in his honor, I am sharing this impression of his spirit.
Michael was special, a truly happy soul (this video of him dancing will make you smile). After he received his diagnosis, he began meditating, and the meditation, along with treatment, helped him sail past his initial prognosis, which was that he had eight months to live. His commitment to mindfulness, visualization, and positive thinking had an undeniable impact, not only on his ability to ride the waves, but to live in presence. (For anyone who is interested, his ER doc wrote an essay about medical journey in The New York Times.)
For most of his illness, Michael remained the picture of health, the most good-looking person in the room. His great, upbeat energy was a constant. I’d sometimes think, He really could outlive all of us.
By mid-February of this year, his sunny persona was the same as ever, even as his condition worsened and it became clear that if he didn’t receive a potentially life-saving drug in time, he would likely not make it. Though he was granted access to that drug, he never got to take it. In early March, he went into the hospital and soon entered the active dying phase.
On the drive up to the hospital, I talked to my friend Gia. Michael, with his good cheer and strong will, had made it so easy to hold space for hope that he could, once again, beat the odds. This news was hard to accept. Gia said, “You watch, when he goes, something miraculous is going to happen, and you’re going to say, just like Gia told me.”
I’d felt miracles around death before, clear glimpses into the sacred waters we’re always swimming in. Ten minutes before my grandmother died, I was standing outside her nursing home, praying that she may pass with ease, when I got hit by sudden-onset euphoria. Oh my god, I thought, She’s seeing her people in heaven, Grampy and Ellen and Gus and her mother. I raced inside. Ten minutes later, she took her last breath, surrounded by love.
The more I thought about it, Michael was the miracle. He’d overcome unimaginable early adversity (going in and out of 35 foster homes by the time he was seven, for example) and emerged a self-reliant, wise, and good-hearted person, finding purpose (in his job as pharmacy director for a non-profit clinic) and love (with Alice, his soulmate).
On the way home from our grandmother’s death, Michael had told Alice he thought it was a beautiful way to go, and so when the time came days later to take him off the ventilator, Alice invited friends and family to surround him as he passed. Before we went into his ICU room, the nurses explained he would probably die soon after being taken off the vent.
Turns out, they were wrong. For two hours, Michael breathed happily and peacefully. The nurses were amazed at his fortitude, we were amazed to have more time. Some of us spoke words of encouragement, my cousin Anna played his favorite song, everyone cried. On some level, we all knew what a privilege it was to be there.
Those two hours felt like a master class in meditation, led by Michael. The way I see it, he opened a powerful energetic space, inviting us to experience what he was experiencing. Meditation brings us into contact with the unified field that is always ever-present. In this unified field, we are all connected, we are all one.
This belief was so important to Michael that, in our last phone call, he’d suddenly changed the subject and said: “I really believe the whole point of being here is to remember how we are one with everyone and everything.” We talked about how so much of life, detours and bad habits included, is, on some elemental level, a desire to return to Oneness. There’s a seed of healing intent in everything we do. As Michael liked to say, “It’s all energy.”
As he was transitioning to becoming non-physical energy, my mind and spirit went up, up, up, and away. I had visions of him, looking dapper in a tux, glancing over his shoulder to check on his beloved Ali. I saw him popping a wheelie on a motorbike, adventuring into the great beyond. There were bright colors, a swirling, all-encompassing peace. I felt deceased loved ones, including my cousin Karen who died in 2017, coming to help him and support Alice. I saw a gigantic, fiery-yellow orb as the words “radiant sun” floated into mind. At one point, I felt like I’d traveled so far away that I needed to remind myself, I have to stay here.
But “here” and “there” aren’t as far apart as we think (as psychic Laura Lynne Jackson talks about here, along with her thoughts on Oneness). When times get hard or when we simply need to connect to our deceased loved ones, the universe, and even ourselves, the unified field is always right there. Throughout his life, including in those final hours, Michael showed us the infinite possibilities of seeing reality, the nature of this wild and wondrous life, from the unencumbered heart. It was one of the most profound experiences I’ve ever had.
After he died, I walked out feeling comfort and wonder, right alongside devastation, grief, and shock. In its most meaningful moments, life can be so surreal.
It got more surreal when I checked my phone in the family waiting room. Z, Karen’s daughter, had sent me a text, a link to a sonnet she wrote about a loved one dying, which included the line, "You glow like the radiant sun." My jaw dropped. This synchronicity was the miracle Gia had called, an exquisite expression of Michael's deeply held belief—of innate connection, between everyone and everything. From this angle, concepts of time and space are obliterated. Without knowing it, Z had been “with” us in the room, just as Michael would now be “with” us in a different form.
Shortly after, I called Z on Face Time and told her that she had done something really cool. She smiled and said, “Something told me to add that line just a few minutes before I sent it to you.”
In these moments, connection is the point. No matter where we are or what life material we’re engaging (or struggling) with, this kind of connection heals because love and connection are the ultimate truths.
May you bask in the light while it shines and not shy away from the darkness when it falls. Each can be a good friend and teacher.
In Michael’s honor, I’m signing off with gratitude, one of his superpowers: I appreciate you.