The-Tibetan-Book-of-Living-and-Dying

HEART ADVICE ON HELPING THE DYING 187
chemistry between you and the other person will take place,
and the tension in the relationship that has lasted so long will
often dissolve. Sometimes, amazingly, you can even become
the best of friends. Never forget, as the famous Tibetan master
Tsongkhapa once said, "A friend can turn into an enemy, and
so an enemy can turn into a friend."
SAYING GOODBYE
It is not only the tensions that you have to learn to let go
of, but the dying person as well. If you are attached and cling
to the dying person, you can bring him or her a lot of unnecessary
heartache and make it very hard for the person to let
go and die peacefully.
Sometimes the dying person can linger on many months or
weeks longer than doctors expected and experience tremendous
physical suffering. Christine Longaker has discovered that
for such a person to be able to let go and die peacefully, he or
she needs to hear two explicit verbal assurances from loved
ones. First, they must give the person permission to die, and
second they must reassure the person they will be all right
after he or she has gone, and that there is no need to worry
about them.
When people ask me how best to give someone permission
to die, I tell them to imagine themselves standing by the bedside
of the person they love and saying with the deepest and
most sincere tenderness: "I am here with you and I love you.
You are dying, and that is completely natural; it happens to
everyone. I wish you could stay here with me, but I don't
want you to suffer any more. The time we have had together
has been enough, and I shall always cherish it. Please now
don't hold onto life any longer. Let go. I give you my full and
heartfelt permission to die. You are not alone, now or ever.
You have all my love."
A student of mine who works in a hospice told me of an
elderly Scottish woman, Maggie, whom she visited after her
husband, close to death, had already fallen into a coma.
Maggie felt inconsolably sad, for she had never spoken to her
husband about her love for him, nor said goodbye, and now
she felt it was too late. The hospice worker encouraged her,
saying that although he seemed unresponsive, perhaps he
could actually still hear her. She had read that many people
who appear to be unconscious can in fact perceive what is
going on. She urged her to spend some time with her husband,