An Intimate Experience With End of Life- A Story to Inspire Cultivating Your Own Worthiness

“Love and belonging are essential to the human experience. As I conducted my interviews, I realized that only one thing separated the men and women who felt a deep sense of love and belonging from the people who seem to be struggling for it. That one thing is the belief in their worthiness. It’s as simple and complicated as this: If we want to fully experience love and belonging, we must believe that we are worthy of love and belonging.” –Brené Brown

On September 9, 2019, as my sister and I sat with our 95-year-old grandfather, Solomon Stein, the chaplain came to visit him. The night before, my grandfather had drifted into what appeared to be a restful sleep, and he remained so as the chaplain spoke to me and my sister. The chaplain told us that when he had spoken to my grandfather the week before, he had never seen anyone more at peace at the end of their life than my grandfather. My grandfather had no regrets. He was complete and knew he was so very loved.

After more than 60 years of adventures, love, marriage, and partnership with my grandfather, my grandmother, Rosanna Stein, passed away on November 23, 2012. At the time of her death, both she and my grandfather were 89 years old.

Within months of my grandmother’s death, I moved back to my hometown of San Luis Obispo with my husband and our infant son. For the last six years of my grandfather’s life, and since he lost my grandmother, I spent nearly every weekend visiting with him.

Being in his presence was a gift. My grandfather was a wonderful storyteller, he was a patient listener, and he was also someone with whom I could just sit. I could hold his hand. I could snuggle up next to him and just be held. I can’t ever remember seeing him rush. He was always so very present with me.

When I read Brené Brown’s quote above, it immediately reminded me of my grandfather. “If we want to fully experience love and belonging, we must believe that we are worthy of love and belonging.” I think that one of the keys to my grandfather’s joy-filled life is captured by this quote and illustrated by a story that my grandfather told me.

When my grandfather was in junior high school growing up in Brooklyn, New York, his mother would often hand him a quarter, which he said was a lot of money back then, and tell him to treat himself to a three-course meal at his favorite Chinese restaurant after school. From the way his eyes would shine and the way that he smiled when he told this story, it was clear to me that although he remembered the experience of eating at this restaurant, what he was truly savoring was feeling treasured by his mother.

I believe that he carried that feeling of being treasured and loved with him throughout the rest of his life. He also learned to treasure and love himself. Because he felt worthy of love and belonging, he was able to fully experience love, both in giving it and in receiving it.

On September 9, 2019, my Grandpa Sol, one of the kindest human beings that I have ever known, took his last breaths. In the 95 years that he was alive, he lived in a state of joy, of gratitude, and of giving and receiving love. He focused his energy on the beauty he saw before him and inspired us all to do the same through his example.

The loss of his life is one of the deepest losses I have ever experienced. Even though he lived to 95, no amount of time with him could have felt like enough. I wish the rest of our days could be filled with just being around him. Not being able to stop by for a hello, some hugs and kisses, and listening to his stories is a new reality that I’m still not ready to accept.

Although I shed many tears in the days leading up to his death and the days following his death, I am also letting myself feel the immense joy that was sharing this one precious life with him and knowing that he lives on in me when I share his wisdom with others.

My grandfather knew his worthiness; he knew it even as a young boy. If he ever forgot it during the many years of his life, he certainly knew it as an old man. His worthiness was not conditioned upon anything: not on how much he weighed, how much money he had, or even what others thought of him. He knew he was worthy of love, and in knowing that he was worthy, he fully received and took in all of the love that we poured into him during his life and during the days leading up to his death.

Death and dying are not commonly discussed in our society. I think, in part, that’s because we fear death. I think what we really fear about death is not the non-existence. I think it’s the fear that we will leave this world without cultivating the love and belonging in our lives that we so desire. So, to cultivate the love and belonging we seek both in our lives now and that we want to experience in the final days leading up to our deaths, we need to claim our worthiness right now. And, when it feels like it’s slipping away, we need to reclaim it.

How Do We Claim or Reclaim Our Worthiness?

What actions can we take?

One way we can claim or reclaim our worthiness is by practicing self-compassion.

Brené Brown, in The Gifts of Imperfection, credits self-compassion researcher Kristin Neff with explaining that there are three elements of self-compassion: self kindness, common humanity and mindfulness.

Brené Brown’s abbreviated definitions of those elements follow.

Self-kindness—“Being warm and understanding toward ourselves when we suffer, fail or feel inadequate, rather than ignoring our pain or flagellating ourselves with self-criticism.”

Common humanity— “Common humanity recognizes that suffering and feeling of personal inadequacy are part of the shared human experience— something we all go through rather than something that happens to ’me’ alone.”

Mindfulness—“Taking a balanced approach to negative emotions so that feelings are neither suppressed nor exaggerated. We cannot ignore our pain and feel compassion for it at the same time. Mindfulness requires that we not ’overidentify’ with thoughts and feelings, so that we are caught up and swept away by negativity.”

In the spirit of my grandfather, I will continue to practice claiming my own worthiness, and I hope you will, too.

For me, of the three elements of self-compassion, practicing self-kindness is the one that I find most challenging and that I’m going to commit to practicing more often.

One way in which I will practice self-kindness is to allow myself to feel into negative emotions. I recently worried about how the unknown outcome of a client’s case would impact my client’s life. I allowed myself to feel into that worry, and by exploring it—rather than ignoring it or trying to distract myself from it—I found that the feeling itself transformed into a feeling of caring and compassion rather than worry. The physical sensation in my chest adjusted from tightness to lightness. The feeling changed in this beautiful way because I practiced self-kindness by allowing myself to create the space to actually feel the worry.

This felt like a huge breakthrough. As feelings of worry or stress come up for me again, rather than trying to distract myself away from those feelings, I’m going to allow myself to acknowledge and feel those emotions. I’m excited to see where this new practice can take me.

Which Most Challenges You?

Out of the three elements of self-compassion—self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness—which one is the most challenging for you to practice? What can you do to practice it?

How can you use self-kindness, common humanity, or mindfulness to help you claim your worthiness as we learned from my Grandpa Sol?

Who can you ask to keep you accountable for practicing self-kindness, common humanity, or mindfulness?

If practicing self-kindness is your goal, then how can you remind yourself to treat yourself kindly?

If practicing common humanity is your goal, then how can you remind yourself that you’re not alone in your experiences?

If practicing mindfulness is your goal, then how can you incorporate a mindfulness routine into your day, and what might it look like?

Who else in your life do you think could benefit from learning more self-compassion?

In what ways can you model for others what it means to treat yourself with compassion?

In this new decade, and in the spirit of my grandfather, I hope that by sharing this reflection and my new self-kindness practice, you have some inspiration for how you can start integrating a self-compassion practice into your routine. You might be surprised by how much it changes your perspective and your quality of life.

“A moment of self-compassion can change your entire day. A string of such moments can change the course of your life.” –Christopher K. Gerber

I fully believe that when we are taking care of ourselves, our families, and those we love, it’s from that space that we contribute most meaningfully to the world and to the lives of our clients.

This article was originally published in the San Luis Obispo Bar Bulletin