Are you wondering about this weird word, “deathing,” as a substitute for “dying”? It is intended to imply a more conscious process leading up to the transformation, for both the one doing the dying and the people who love that person. Our culture is so afraid of death both individually and collectively, that this re-naming is an attempt to notify us all that it can be different.
So far, Kimchi’s deathing has involved a lot of life, a lot of joy and laughter, art, and a forthright attempt to help us all deal with death in a more conscious and accepting way. This renaming is part of that.
Kimchi has been saying for months now that SHE is NOT DYING. Which is not to say that she thinks she will become cancer-free and her time of death will recede into the unforeseeable future. It is still foreseeable—more and more, actually. She is working up to transformation. Out of this body into—the unknown, the void, the dark womb from which all things come, and to which all things return. Like a caterpillar inexplicably being compelled to construct a cocoon and seriously rearrange itself to become something that looks entirely different, yet is apparently the same being.
She sees herself as a soul/consciousness/spirit/essence/beingness that inhabits a particular body at the moment—and this same spirit (let’s call it for now) is shedding the body by going through the deathing process, but continuing on. She says, “I am not dying, my body is dying—I am deathing.” She is distinguishing body and soul –her body is dying, but her soul is not, it is merely witnessing the dying of the body. So it is deathing, not dying.
And positive living leads to positive deathing.
And sometimes you just need one of these to help you along:
