David Bowie's Son Shared This Letter From Doctor About Father's Passing.

The world mourned the loss of David Bowie on January 10 - a legendary singer, songwriter, producer, actor, multi-instrumentalist, painter, record producer, and overall human being.

Duncan Jones, Bowie's son, shared a tribute to his father, penned by the palliative care doctor that they came to know throughout Bowie's 18-month cancer illness.

Find the letter below.

Dear David,

Oh no, don’t say it’s true – whilst realization of your death was sinking in during those grey, cold January days of 2016, many of us went on with our day jobs. At the beginning of that week I had a discussion with a hospital patient, facing the end of her life. We discussed your death and your music, and it got us talking about numerous weighty subjects, that are not always straightforward to discuss with someone facing their own demise. In fact, your story became a way for us to communicate very openly about death, something many doctors and nurses struggle to introduce as a topic of conversation. But before I delve further into the aforementioned exchange, I’d like to get a few other things off my chest, and I hope you don’t find them a saddening bore.

Thank you for the Eighties when your ChangesOneBowie album provided us with hours of joyful listening, in particular on a trip from Darmstadt to Cologne and back. My friends and I will probably always associate Diamond Dogs, Rebel Rebel, China Girl and Golden Years with that particular time in our lives. Needless to say, we had a great time in Köln.

Thank you for Berlin, especially early on, when your songs provided some of the musical backdrop to what was happening in East and West Germany. I still have ‘Helden’ on vinyl and played it again when I heard you had died (you’ll be pleased to hear that Helden will also feature in our next Analogue Music Club in the Pilot pub in Penarth later this month). Some may associate David Hasselhoff with the fall of the wall and reunification; but many Germans probably wish that time had taken a cigarette and put it in Mr Hasselhoff’s mouth around that time, rather than hear “I’ve been looking for freedom” endlessly on the radio. For me that time in our history is sound tracked by ‘Heroes’.

Thanks also on behalf of my friend Ifan, who went to one of your gigs in Cardiff. His sister Haf was on the doors that night and I heard a rumour that Ifan managed to sneak in for free (he says sorry!). You gave him and his mate a wave from the stage which will remain in his memory forever.

Thank you for Lazarus and Blackstar. I am a palliative care doctor, and what you have done in the time surrounding your death has had a profound effect on me and many people I work with. Your album is strewn with references, hints and allusions. As always, you don’t make interpretation all that easy, but perhaps that isn’t the point. I have often heard how meticulous you were in your life. For me, the fact that your gentle death at home coincided so closely with the release of your album, with its good-bye message, in my mind is unlikely to be coincidence. All of this was carefully planned, to become a work of death art. The video of Lazarus is very deep and many of the scenes will mean different things to us all; for me it is about dealing with the past when you are faced with inevitable death.

Your death at home. Many people I talk to as part of my job think that death predominantly happens in hospitals, in very clinical settings, but I presume you chose home and planned this in some detail. This is one of our aims in palliative care, and your ability to achieve this may mean that others will see it as an option they would like fulfilled. The photos that emerged of you some days after your death, were said to be from the last weeks of your life. I do not know whether this is correct, but I am certain that many of us would like to carry off a sharp suit in the same way that you did in those photos. You looked great, as always, and it seemed in direct defiance of all the scary monsters that the last weeks of life can be associated with.

For your symptom control needs, you will presumably have had palliative care professionals advise on pain, nausea, vomiting, breathlessness, and I can imagine they did this well. I envisage that they also discussed any emotional anguish you may have had.

For your advance care planning (i.e. planning heath and care decisions prior to things getting worse and before becoming unable to express them), I am certain you will have had a lot of ideas, expectations, prior decisions and stipulations. These may have been set out clearly in writing, near your bed at home, so that everyone who met you was clear on what you wanted, regardless of your ability to communicate. It is an area not just palliative care professionals, but in fact all healthcare workers want to provide and improve, so that it is less likely that any sudden health incidents will automatically result in a blue-light ambulance emergency room admission. Especially when people become unable to speak for themselves.

And I doubt that anyone will have given you Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR) in the last hours/days of your life, or even considered it. Regrettably, some patients who have not actively opted out of this treatment still receive it, by default. It involves physical, sometimes bone-breaking chest compressions, electric shocks, injections and insertion of airways and is only successful in 1-2% of patients whose cancer has spread to other organs in their body. It is very likely that you asked your medical team to issue you with a Do Not Attempt Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation Order. I can only imagine what it must have been like to discuss this, but you were once again a hero, or a ‘Held’, even at this most challenging time of your life. And the professionals who saw you will have had good knowledge and skill in the provision of palliative and end-of-life care. Sadly, this essential part of training is not always available for junior healthcare professionals, including doctors and nurses, and is sometimes overlooked or under-prioritized by those who plan their education. I think if you were ever to return (as Lazarus did), you would be a firm advocate for good palliative care training being available everywhere.

So back to the conversation I had with the lady who had recently received the news that she had advanced cancer that had spread, and that she would probably not live much longer than a year or so. She talked about you and loved your music, but for some reason was not impressed by your Ziggy Stardust outfit (she was not sure whether you were a boy or a girl). She too, had memories of places and events for which you provided an idiosyncratic soundtrack. And then we talked about a good death, the dying moments and what these typically look like. And we talked about palliative care and how it can help. She told me about her mother’s and her father’s death, and that she wanted to be at home when things progressed, not in a hospital or emergency room, but that she’d happily transfer to the local hospice should her symptoms be too challenging to treat at home.

We both wondered who may have been around you when you took your last breath and whether anyone was holding your hand. I believe this was an aspect of the vision she had of her own dying moments that was of utmost importance to her, and you gave her a way of expressing this most personal longing to me, a relative stranger.

Thank you.

 

What Is Life? - By Swami Yogananda

WHAT is life? Life is a wave of electrons and atoms, a wave of protoplasm, a wave of power, and a wave of consciousness on the Ocean of Spirit. Life is intelligent, organized motion. It becomes a clod of earth or melts itself into vapor, or becomes a human being or a flower. Stones, living Beings, and dead creatures are all waves on the Ocean of Life. There is no death nor cessation of motion in anything. Everything is living.

Life After Death

IF LIFE is eternal motion, then why does death visit the human body? This is the great question. Death is not cessation nor annihilation, for even matter is indestructible. (At death, the life and intelligence waves, with the Soul, slip away from the body wave.) The burned candle changes form, but its weight and constituent ingredients can be found if the carbonic acid gas is held in a jar. Matter is Life. Life is matter. Life is intelligence. Matter is sleeping intelligence. Since matter is indestructible, all Life is indestructible.

However, that does not mean that Life is not changeable. In fact, Eternal Infinite Life manifests itself through myriads of finite forms of flowers and living creatures. The phenomena of death, or the illusion of change, is reflected in all finite substances, otherwise, the Infinite would be limited and measured by finite substances. The Infinite would lose its nature by becoming finite, definite, circumscribed, and molded.

That is why the beautiful rose and the glorious youth, after expressing certain qualities of the Infinite, disappear as silent waves into the Infinite Ocean of Life. The body is the froth of life on the intelligence and Soul waves. The froth is temporary compared to the individualized Soul wave.

Life is relative. Some waves of Life last longer than others, but they all have to express the Infinite variously and fully. They all emerge from and merge into the Infinite Ocean. The speck of star dust, the sun, moon, clouds, rainbow, the gossamer, the nightingale, and the whippoorwill all have to express the silent Infinite. Natural death comes when each object, each human being, has done its full share in expressing the Infinite. The untimely death of a youth, suggests that he is changing his diseased body vehicle and is existing elsewhere for better opportunities.

That life is not dependent on food or oxygen is proved by verified cases of men living for long periods of time in a state of suspended animation. Life can exist in a corpse in a different form. A chicken heart can live 16 years in a chemical syrup—longer than the life of a chicken. A crocodile lives 600 years. Life is vagrant, like a river appearing and disappearing in the desert of Life.

Death gives new robes to the Soul actors, in which to play new dramas on the stage of Life. Death, above all else, is a transition to a better land, a change of residence. The wise man who has opened his Spiritual Eye finds that the death of earthly life gives him a new beginning in another supernal life. On this earth, seeing, we see not. An X-Ray picture can show the bones of the fingers, which the eye cannot see. In the same way, we do not see the cords of light—blue, violet, aquamarine, orange, yellow, and white, which bind the atoms of the earth together. We hear the gross noise of the world and a few sweet melodies, and nothing more.

The wise man beholds in this Life, and after death with his Spiritual Eye, not a region of chaos and dark sleep, which is all that the Soul in ignorance experiences after death. Death is very attractive to the former, for instead of terror he finds infinite freedom. The Soul-bird-of-paradise finds it freedom from the limitations of the cage of manifestation. The Soul, appareled in searchlights of multi-hues, soars in infinite directions searching, claiming its lost territory of Eternity.

Terrible thought! If there were no death, fifteen hundred million people would monopolize the infinite. The planets and the universes would trade-mark God with the seal of finitude. The Infinite would be exhausted. Life and death would lose the taste of charming mystery. Everything would grow old and stale. The Infinite is ever-new, so by God’s Infinite Magic Wand of renewing death, He keeps everything ever expressing, ever remodeling itself into more suitable vehicles for Infinite expression.

Hence this paradox—the dance of death—shattering worlds, pulverizing skulls, crumbling roses, destroying fifteen hundred million people every hundred years, killing billions of fishes, trillions of bacteria, and powdering sextillion countless atoms. The life beautiful is evolving, training Souls in the factory of mighty death. Death is the Cosmic furnace in which the dross of all objects and living Souls is purified. Death comes to a dutiful Soul as its promotion to a higher state. It comes to an unsuccessful Soul to give it another chance in a different environment. The wise man experiences through death an infinitely better, safer haven.

Only those who have practiced the control of the heart-beat and learned to live without oxygen—by eating less carbonized food and preventing decay of tissues in the body through definite training in meditation—can consciously experience death at will as a rest from constant muscular activity, and specially Life’s involuntary activity of the heart, lungs, diaphragm, circulation, etc.

In heaven there are no crackers or soup, no breakfast, lunch, or dinner, no water, no oxygen, or sunshine. Mortals should learn to live more by inner energy, unattached to the body. Those who learn in this Life to live by Spirit, and are unattached to the body, quickly realize the freedom of the Soul from the bondage of oxygen, food, and water, after death. Death is a fear to the ignorant human animal, but it is a transition to a higher state to the wise—a promotion to higher grades of Life.

In the mellow light of the other world, the wise person perceives the inner nature of stars, stones, living Beings, dust, iron, gold, earth, and planets, dazzling with Infinite brilliancy. Every object which we perceive has two sides—the gross ugly outer side, present before the physical eyes, and the inner, exceedingly beautiful side, revealed to the eye of wisdom.

The crude brick seen by the physical eye appears to be like a garden of electrons when viewed through the Spiritual Eye. Human beings with skeleton bodies, ugly sinews, and red blood appear as beautiful, many-hued living Beings made of visible, mellow, materialized love. The rose of the human garden looks like a paper rose compared to the inner rosy luster of its whirling atoms.

Nothing fades in that world so quickly. Everything talks there silently. The roses talk to the Souls with the language of Spirit. The garden of roses lives by the breath of the Souls, and the Souls breathe the aroma of the roses. The gentlest earthly flower—the lily or violet—drunk with gross sunlight, is not allowed to tread the sanctity of that fair garden of the gods.

The mortal, enslaved by oxygen and sunlight, and gorged with material food, faints at the delicate airless atmosphere of that Divine supernal region. Darkness and gross lights equally lose their relative dualities in the darkless dark, in the lightless but all-revealing Soul-light of that sphere. Yogis practice control of Life and the breathless state to be able to live in airless regions of living light, unburdened by the body.

Souls in that region do not encase themselves in bundles of bones with fleshly covers. They carry no frail, heavy frames to collide and break with other crude solids. There is no war there between solids, oceans, lightning, disease, and man’s frail frame. There are no accidents there, for all things exist in mutual help and not in antagonism. All forms of vibration are in harmony. All forces live in peace and conscious helpfulness. The Souls, the rays on which they tread, the orange rays which they drink and eat—all are living. They live in mutual cognizance and cooperation, breathing not oxygen, but the joy of the Spirit. There they live as long as they want to live, playing like waves on the Infinite Ocean of Light, and there they melt into one another by celestial love, as the Ocean of Light.

No bacteria, no thirst, no selfish desires, no heartaches, no lust, no pain nor sorrow, no boisterous fleeting joy, no accidents, shattered bones or skulls, and no excruciating pain of parting, can ever exist there.

In that better region change is not decay, but change exists like a Cosmic magician, to entertain with variety through Infinite expression. There the law of change is governed by the will of Souls and is not forced upon them.

Let us not bury the Soul in the grave and call death annihilation, but let us see it as a door through which bravely-marching Souls of earthly Life can enter to find the all-alluring, all-charming region of our ever-luminous, ever-peaceful Common Cosmic Home. Mortal fears, heartaches, dreams, and illusions fade, and the darkness of death changes into another infinitely more beautiful universe. Why pity the dead? In wisdom, they pity us. They can see their super-region and us at the same time with their Spiritual Eyes, while we cannot see them with our gross spiritually-blind physical eyes.

Pushing Away from the Truth

I keep hoping that I will not care if anyone reads my book. But the truth is, of course, I will. I have already found myself feeling sad when I discover that there are those facing difficult circumstances of their own who are afraid to read this book for fear that the sadness of it will only intensify their own. I can understand that... yet, I feel that the expression of sadness told well, and the ultimate recognition that none of us will be immune from experiencing this part of the life process can help take the sharp edge of pain we are going through and meet it with  courage and... what?  Maybe even bliss.  For the simple reason that we are human and we are not alone.  We all bleed. I hope that the reasons for not reading A Reluctant Life will change and become the very reason you are drawn to it.

A Reluctant Life

This book represents a three-year period of time in which I was confronted by illness and the eventual death of the man I loved, my husband and the subsequent aftermath of dealing with that loss. I observed and examined a daily life now permanently changed. Many people have written their own heart-breaking stories. Some famous, some not well-known. Some not known at all. The exploration of how one goes through this particular life event, is what interests me. Does it remind us that as living creatures we can still entertain hope and renewal of what is most human about us, or does it cloak us in so much sadness that we cannot find our way back to the light. What is achievable? How do we learn to live again? These were the underlying essential questions in this book.

Ledicia’s Key

Clara At Sixty

A Reluctant Life

Best Friends