“Said she would tell her own children about me” On Death and Dying - by Savitri Bess, Eldera Mentor
When and how shall I let Taeyun know that I’ve been given a terminal diagnosis? And with a prediction of 4-6 months to live?
Taeyun is my 9-year-old Korean mentee, born in Korea and now living with her family in Lima, Peru. On my birthday, January 21, 2024, Taeyun and I met for the first time. It was pretty much love at first sight. She’s a bright, adorable, and charming child. Her mom, Minkyung, had told me in our introductory email that Taeyun was very shy, and that Taeyun didn’t know how she’d ever talk to someone she didn’t know for a whole half an hour. I assured Minkyung that if Taeyun needed her mom there for a few sessions until Taeyun got comfortable, that would be fine. The first half hour went by fast as Taeyun and I chatted about her tennis games, her friends at her private school, and her love of language and maths. Before our next session, to my delight, Minkyung emailed me that Taeyun does not want her mom to be at our next session. “She will show up by herself.”
Taeyun and I had been meeting weekly for only a month or so when I received the results of an MRI that showed I have brain cancer. I saw no need to prolong my life. I’m 84 and have had a full and amazing life, so I skipped oncology and went straight to palliative care, and now I’ve joined home hospice.
I’m still upright after 4 months, but the nurse keeps telling me my symptoms could decline quickly. So, I started planning how to tell Taeyun. I decided to let her know through a children’s book on dying. That way she and I could discuss the story, and all about the cycles of life, and beginnings and endings. She is a very young 9, and so I knew a picture book would be best. We’d had already read from a few picture books—Disney’s version of Winnie-the-Pooh and a few others. Our local librarian recommended about 10 books on death and dying; I rejected them all as too morbid or negative. Death needs to be both mysterious and a celebration, not some morose event filled with darkness and silent nods. Sadness is beautiful, of course, but sadness is a heart thing, and not something to be dreaded or a cause for shame.
A friend helped locate the perfect story: The Circles in the Sky by Karl James Mountford, about a fox who follows a flock of birds who were singing in a way that was neither sad nor happy…just different. After a long trek following the birds through the woods, Fox discovers a bird lying on its back, not moving. Fox tries scaring it to get it to move. Then he tries feeding it a worm. A puzzled and sad Fox lies there pondering Bird. Meanwhile a moth has been watching Fox. Moth flies down to offer Fox words of understanding. “The bird is not here the way you and I are here,” says Moth. “What do you mean!!?” says Fox, clearly annoyed. “This bird is right here, all bird-shaped!!!” After Moth gently explains, bit by bit Fox begins to understand. Moth tells how the Moon always sets and so does the sun. They set and then they come up again. All of life is about cycles. And the Moon never forgets the Sun, nor does the Sun forget the Moon. Before leaving the meadow, Moth and Fox lay Bird into a patch of wildflowers and say goodbye. Moth accompanies Fox home. Along the way, Fox notices flowers growing where there’d been none earlier. Fox and Moth arrive at Fox’s home at dawn, a dawn illustrated with a glorious rising Sun. The same birds that began the story are singing for the new day.
To back up a bit and explain a little about my illness. Forgetfulness and confusion are two of my symptoms—not due to dementia or Alzheimer’s. In addition to a huge calendar for remembering appointments, I found that if I pause and wait, it comes to me what I’m doing and why. In the kitchen I might be puzzled as to why I’ve opened a cabinet or the refrigerator. One time while driving, I could not find my speedometer—not in the clock, not in the odometer, not in the radio. I realized it was time to stop driving. I still walk on the beach, but no longer daily. And mostly I’m cooking for myself, supplemented with friends bringing soups. No one can predict when someone will die. My symptoms are increasing gradually—headaches, inner dizziness, occasional nausea, pressure on my head, sleepiness, and such. Cognitively I’m fine with things like editing, writing, teaching, reading astrology charts. But not with a lot of the usual daily activities.
Last Friday, I forgot my session with Taeyun. An hour later I remembered. Absolutely mortified, I knew it was time to let her know about my terminal diagnosis. I contacted Minkyung and we re-scheduled for the next day. I asked Minkyung permission to begin to let Taeyun know, and she approved of my plan.
Intuitively I realized we needed to begin with the way we often do—Taeyun telling me about her day and us chatting about it. Right away, I apologized to her for forgetting our session the night before and let her know I forgot because of an illness in my brain. She wanted to know if I’d gone to the hospital. I said I had gone there to get an MRI, a testing machine for seeing inside the body. I didn’t feel it was necessary to give details about the name or the nature of my illness, and so I stayed with calling it an illness. And it wasn’t time to talk about death yet.
She was happy for me to read a story, so I started with The Circles in the Sky. As I read, I’d ask her a question now and then. She loved the illustrations and the story. At one point I asked her if she thought Bird would live. She said, “Yes.” She laughed in some places that were not funny, and so I knew we were in very new territory. In the end, I asked her if she’d known anyone who had died. She hadn’t but said her father’s father had died when he was young. They have a photo of him. At the end of our session, she said she enjoys all the ways she learns new things from our sessions.
When I reported to Minkyung how it went with Taeyun, she wrote back expressing gratitude. She had been operated on for cancer of the thyroid and gets regular treatments in Korea every six months, but had not let her children know, as she thought they were too young to understand. Now she realizes she can tell them. And now I understand why Taeyun asked me if I had gone to the hospital. She was aware her mother had been hospitalized and followed the logic of that.
At our next session, Taeyun did not want to re-visit The Circles in the Sky, as we’d planned. “I’m having fun,” she said. She loved playing at writing back and forth in the chat, which we’ve done a few times. I thought it best to let her lead the way in this session. So, we had fun. No talking about Bird or my situation or anything to do with death and dying.
Before our next week’s meeting, I’d found a short, gently illustrated book on beginnings and endings, and life that goes on in between. Lifetimes: The beautiful way to explain death to children. After Taeyun shared a bit about her day, I dove into the topic of end of life. I asked her if she knew hold old I was. “I’m 84,” I said. “How long do you think I’ll live?” She said, “To 120.” We both laughed. I read a couple of passages from Lifetimes and showed her illustrations of different animals and plants and people, and their beginnings and endings—and the life in between. She was very attentive. Sometimes she made one or two-word comments in the chat.
Then I opened The Circles in the Sky to the page where Moth is explaining to Fox, “Bird is not here the way you and I are here.” I asked Taeyun where she thought Bird went. No answer. “Where will I go after I die?” “To the coffin,” she said. I laughed heartily. And so did she. Truthfully, I’d never imagined myself in a coffin, so that was a bit of a shock and quite funny to me. I said I’d rather be burned, but she didn’t like that idea at all. Taeyun is Christian and goes to a Christian school, and we’ve discussed a few Bible stories before. She told me that in Korea they always visit her grandfather’s grave and perform a little ritual. That piece of information helped me understand how she came up with the image of a coffin. I asked her, “What about heaven? Wouldn’t I go there?” She agreed that’s where I’d go. Then she came up with an idea that caused her to giggle a lot: “And in heaven you’ll play with God.” And I said, “Yes!! I’ll have great fun playing with God.” We laughed and laughed.
It's worthwhile noting that at the end of this session, Taeyun said she would tell her own children about me. I felt this to be an inner reflection on her part, of her understanding that Moon never forgets the Sun, nor the Sun the Moon.
In summary, I believe this experience of mine with Taeyun on the subject of death and dying, might be very useful for Eldera, as all of us mentors are growing old and could find ourselves in a similar situation as mine. Or, it could even be that any one of us could die suddenly, and perhaps it could be useful to be prepared for the sake of the mentees. Death and dying is a natural and open subject in many countries, including Ireland where I lived for a year. Everyone, even little children, attend wakes where friends and relatives pay their respects to the body of the loved one who lies in an open casket in the living room. Meanwhile, everyone is sitting around, chatting, drinking tea and eating treats. In the evening, tea is replaced with Jameson, and they share stories about the dead one, amidst tears and laughter. In India where I was living for a while, when someone died, they were cremated on the beach. Smoke from the fire would still be smoldering in the morning while locals were having tea at a nearby tea stall. In the USA, death tends to be a taboo subject, or at least surrounded with fear and foreboding, and yet it is as normal as birth and happens as regularly.
Maybe we at Eldera can bring death and dying into perspective at an appropriate time, and help mentees find comfort in expressing the full spectrum of emotions of sadness, joy, and gratitude.
I will continue meeting with Taeyun until I no longer am able.
