Honoring Metaphysical Death
What if we held space for death. What if we called by its name, invited it into the room, and lit a candle in its honor…
I feel like I have been thousands of different women in this one lifetime alone. Each new year, each new job, each new love, each new city, each new chapter, every transition… shedding, shedding, shedding… endlessly someone new. Culturally, we celebrate our beginnings: birthdays, baby showers, weddings, house-warmings, but we rarely mark the ending that led to that new beginning. We are deeply disconnected with endings, with death. We fear it. We avoid it. We gloss over it. And we surely don’t intentionally celebrate it. But, what if we did…
What if we held space for death. What if we called by its name, invited it into the room, and lit a candle in its honor… What if we found the beauty in it’s presence, sat tenderly in its pain + heard it out… What if we lamented + wailed aloud… What if we romanticized its offerings like a cat who brought us a dead mouse…
How generous. How thoughtful. How deeply loved are we…
If we created space for death in our journeys, we would be more in tune with our bodies, more internally guided, and less likely to outsource our power. We would be less anxious + more fulfilled. If we marked each shedding with a “SELAH,” we would be more prepared to move forward + less likely to look back. If we marked each death with a capital D + said a proper farewell to each passing of our being, we would be closer to our Divinity, closer to a sense of wholeness, and closer to feeling Home, in our bodies and in the world.
Here are five ways you can honor metaphysical or ego death in your world and shift your relationship with death…
Five Ways to Honor Metaphysical Death
Hold a death ceremony
When physical death takes place, we hold wakes + funerals. Ceremonies and rituals mark time + transition, and the same can be done in metaphysical death. You can designate a holy space or pick a corner of your bedroom, home, yard, or your favorite park. You can invite friends + family or show up solo. You can play special music or let silence do its job. You can read poetry or perform interpretive dance, you can light incense or candles, or you can scatter flowers + dirt. You can do all of these things or one of these things. You can observe the moment in any way that resonates. A ceremony can be as simple as a moment of silence or blowing out a candle. What’s most important is the intention + the reverence that you are holding the moment with.
Create an altar
Altars are spaces for grieving, remembering, and tending. They are physical places for the love to go. Nothing is off limits at altars. You can cry at them, pray at them, vent to them, sing to them, or simply visit with them. Altars can be simple + take up the corner of a shelf, or you can dedicate a whole space for them to sprawl out + take over. I like to fill my altars with all the things: pictures, oracle cards, statues, trinkets, keepsakes, crystals, feathers, incense, candles, drawings + doodles, letters, flowers, dead + alive, plants + herbs, artwork, and offerings; but something as simple as flowers + a candle are enough to hold the weight of death.
Write an obituary
If words are your medium of expression + formal goodbyes give you a sense of closure, writing an obituary may be the perfect way for you to honor death in your world. Find time to write out a detailed look into your life, highlighting how your work unfolded, how you loved, what moments shaped you, who + what you’re leaving behind, and the legacy you want to be remembered for. This is an opportunity to tell your story and say your final goodbyes to a version of yourself that you have outlived.
You can keep your obituary as a keepsake for yourself or you could create a space to share it in a safe space.
Host a repast
Let’s be honest, food makes everything better. It’s a salve to the aching heart and an anchor that brings us back to the body. On a physical level, food can be regulating and it provides our body with the fuel we need to keep going; and on an energetic level, food sustains our vibration and our ability to process mentally + emotionally. Sharing a meal is an opportunity for connection + reflection. It can be a moment to break from the tedious nature of the journey.
Food is what sustains us. It says, “keep going,” indicating that there is more life ahead. Hosting a repast, no matter how big or small, formal or informal, is a marker of transition. It is where one leg of the journey ends + another begins.
Bury the dead
If physical acts are your love language, burying something with your own hands may be your personal brand of goodbye. First, choose something that represents a quality, pattern, habit, characteristic, chapter, or experience that you are laying to rest. Next, find somewhere safe to bury it. Public or heavily-populated places, where your dead may be dug up or disturbed, should be avoided. Finally, you can bury your dead with or without a death ceremony. The moment can be formal or informal. What’s most important is your intention behind the burial + the physical act of leaving something behind.
An offering to accompany any death…
Let my gardens speak for me when I am gone
Let them speak in colored whispers of all the beauty I have seen and felt, and lived
Let them speak of how much death had to find me; how many hard seasons it took to make me a living, breathing thing
Let them speak of my seasons of growth and abundance but let them also tell of my seasons of loss and decay
Let the soft, wet earth be a reminder of hardness that didn't win
Of sadness that didn't calcify
Of surrender that triumphed over resistance
And let the glorious, fragrant blooms speak of my life and its greatest lesson: that the beauty we make never dies
Come sit by my garden
by Emory Hall
