Final Gifts

    My friend June has been telling me about her 90 year old mother dying slowly but beautifully. The medical staff say her mother is hallucinating, but she is more lucid than usual. Sometimes she sees a person in white behind her.  People who have already died.  Or someone wonderful but she doesn't know who it is.

    The hospice book "Final Gifts" says this is common for the dying. A thinning curtain between our seen and the unseen world.  It's a gift of comfort in transition for the going and for the staying.  A thin space.  I heard this term for the first time a couple weeks ago at an arts guild weekend retreat.  A familiar concept to those with less conservative backgrounds than mine. Thin spaces are physical places that are often borders, like shores or edges of groves, where the spiritual world is said to be more readily apparent.  June's mother's room has become such a place in recent weeks.  Hard for June but poignantly lovely at the same time.