An elephant-sized impact

I could say that participating in the “Dying Without the Elephant” healing circle changed my life, but that would be an understatement. It changed my death, which turns out to have an even greater impact.

I have what Robin Williams had: Lewy Body Dementia. At this stage, I’m experiencing mild cognitive impairment or MCI, which has brought me many “golden moments.” The brain-driven life I lived before my diagnosis has started to make way for something besides the cognitive. Now, when something happens, it first goes through my guts where I FEEL and have an initial connection/response to it, and only then does my mind get involved in thinking it through.

MCI has put me in a place that I value and will be glad to stay in for as long as possible. However, I’ve made a clear and absolute decision to end my life before I reach what I call the “black line.” I joined the circle with the understanding that being dead by suicide because of dementia was the same as being dead because of a different disease. It turns out that I got the dead part right, but I got the life part wrong, and that has been one of the biggest impacts of this circle for me.

The hosts of the elephant circle took a group of very different people, along with a very challenging topic, and created an almost unimaginable level of openness, sense of security, and feeling of connection among us. With this in place and strengthening each time we meet, the elephant circle has flourished.

Participating in such a group has been incredibly moving and special. Hearing other circle members tell about their illnesses and how they, their families, and friends deal with those illnesses was beyond anything I had ever been part of. In one circle, each of us shared what we planned for our actual death-time, and it wasn’t “hypothetical” at all. Each of us talked through how we were preparing for what we all knew was coming.

The elephant circle is hosted by three death doulas: people with experience in the dying process who can help with planning and even step in at certain points. It occurred to me that I am a self-doula. A self-doula designs her or his own dying process and carries it out. This is giving me an amazing immediacy to living. As my death becomes part of my life and my life becomes part of my death, I feel they are both far fuller for it.

I went into the elephant circle as a person with early-stage dementia facing deterioration until reaching death. From everything that happened in the circle, I say with a completely full heart (and with eyes full of tears of emotion) “I am in a beautiful place.”