The Process It was 11 years ago this November that my mother passed away.  Every year when the leaves start changing colors and I start to feel a nip in the air, I find myself reminiscing about the week I spent intently watching the process of dying.  What I imagined, at one time, would be such a terrifying and sad experience, turned out to be an amazingly peaceful and beautiful experience.  Mom had been sick for over 30 years with a brain tumor and after a series of strokes, was completely bed ridden the last 15 years of her life.  Her body had struggled, and therefore she had struggled.  Upon her death, that struggle had ended, and mom was free!   I remember receiving the phone call from my father that mom was in the hospital again, and that this may be "it."  I rushed home as quickly as possible.  Until I got there and actually saw her, I felt so scared that I could barely drive the car home.  I was remembering the look in her eyes two weeks earlier when we celebrated her 65th Birthday at my grandmother's house when I kissed and hugged her good-bye...somehow I just knew that would be the last time I would see mom awake...and it was.    I found myself resisting this truth, and yet I so wanted mom to be free from the armor of her body and the suppression she must have felt from the tumor in her brain.  When I arrived at the hospital, mom was sleeping and she continued to sleep for the entire week leading up to her death so I never got to see her eyes again, but the memory of her soul speaking to mine at Nanny's house - almost asking permission to "move on" - would stay with me forever.  What I witnessed that week was the hustle and bustle of the life inside the hospital as well as outside the hospital.  Everyone always appeared to be in such a hurry...so much to do, while Mom just lay there peacefully, her body slowly dying.  My mind tried so hard to go back over our life together, but to no avail because I was too present to "remember."  In fact, it's that week that I think I learned what being truly present is...not having to "do" so much and to just be.  I observed the inevitable - that which was completely out of my control.  The day I left for home, my friend Monroe gave me the book, Tuesday's with Morrie.   I read the book that week and one line really sticks with me..."You learn how to live when you learn how to die."  I think the seasons prove the power behind that statement.  Every year the leaves become brilliant shades of yellow, red, and orange before releasing their grip and falling gracefully to the ground where they die peacefully. There the tree remains standing all alone without its "cloak" of leaves, undaunted by its nakedness.  It remains, quiet and strong, until new buds appear on its branches.  The tree experiences this cycle of life and death each year without holding on to either concept to tightly.  What's left of the tree is its true essence.  It has been stripped to its core.  And it just allows the process to take place and remains fully present to each moment.    As a human being witnessing this "dying" in another human being; I was, and remain to be, reminded of what I can do without in my life.  Or perhaps another way of saying it is I was reminded of what is really important to me.  Death (or sickness for that matter), like winter, is a time for introspection or self-inquiry.  Adyashanti, in his brilliant book, Emptiness Dancing, reminds us that "winter is a sacred portal, an opportunity.   In a real sense, self-inquiry is a spiritually induced form of winter-time."  He elaborates further by saying that, as humans, we call our "leaves" - ideas, concepts, attachments and conditioning."  Rather than letting these "leaves" fall at the end of their season, we tend to cling on to them for dear life allowing no space for change, expansion or growth.  Mom passed gently away on a Friday night and my idea of death had passed away with her.  The week had been so sad, but at the same time my life was filled with a brilliance I had never witnessed or felt priviously.  There was a sense of peace in my heart for her, for my father, for my sister and for me as well.  About three weeks after her death, my mother visited me in a dream.  She called to me from the hospital bed she spent so much of her life in which was right off the kitchen at my father's house.  My sister and I had had been cooking together in the kitchen and my father was watching television in the den off the other side of the kitchen.    When she called my name I remember feeling very "awake" at the time.  I peered around the corner and there she lied with a gentle smile on the face I remembered from Nanny's house.  I asked if she wanted me to get Candace and Dad and she responded that she was there to see just me.  When I walked to her bedside, she asked me to remove the covers.  She was dressed in a t-shirt I had gifted her several years back and she was bicycling her legs.  Those motionless legs that I had not seen move in so many years were kicking away!  She said to me through happy tears, "I'm free!  Look what I can do!"  And I knew from that moment on that she was.    Was it a dream or did Mom really visit me???  All I know is that as I'm writing this I am experiencing the same goose bumps I did when I awoke that night.  What I am sure of, however, is that through her life and her death, Mom taught me how to live and to die.  Life is a glorious process.  And to truly experience the process we must be purely present to each moment regardless of the "season."  I am also sure that my choice to teach Yoga; reminding people every day to appreciate and care for their bodies, is a direct result of a life of watching my mother struggle so much with her sick body.  I'm so happy she's free!  I love you mom!!!  And I love the process of life!!!