Opening space for death

[Pankaj Bhargava]

Thanks for sahring Wendy. This is very touching & powerful. I am reasonably sure that no other method would have acknowledged death & contributions of a lifetime as well as give space for people to cathart about the event in such a dignified & beautiful manner. Hope to learn from it.
   
  Regards
   
  Pankaj

Wendy Farmer-O'Neil <wendy at xe.net> wrote:
                Well, it seems like I have been doing little else these days.  And while we’ve been talking about circles of life and mutations of the form, I thought I’d share a bit about my experiences over the past 8 months.
   
  In November my Grandfather died.  I had offered to do something for the celebration of his life and my Grandmother courageously took me up on it—she had no idea what OS was, just trusted me.  She had a lot of fear that no one would stand up and speak.  She had been to a traditional celebration not long before and no one had shared anything.  I designed a blend of whole person process and OST that I have blogged about in detail here (http://wordgravity.blogspot.com/2006/11/open-space-memorial.html ).  People shared deeply from their hearts—including many who thought they wouldn’t be able to.  
   
  Then in April, my mother-in-law died.  The news arrived at 7:00 pm Tuesday, on the evening of the first day of Open Space training session here on Gabriola with Raffi.  Within an hour my husband was off on his way across the country to join his family.  Raffi went above and beyond to keep things running smoothly and me together over the next week.  The funeral was scheduled for Saturday morning.  I had done a lot of reading and knew that it was important for my children and I to remember their Gramma at the same time—some way of being a family together.  But what to do?  I had sixteen years of ministerial experience with plenty of ceremonial and ritual background, but what could I do that would be meaningful to two six-year-olds and a three-year-old?  Open Space has become my touchstone, so I wondered: Could I adapt OST for our funeral?  Well, as it turned out, yes.  And this is how it went:
   
  Ring the bells.
  Form a circle.
  Welcome to our time and space to remember Gramma.
  We are thinking of Daddy and while he isn’t here, we are just the right people to remember Gramma right now, right here.
  We don’t know when a life first begins, but whenever it begins is the right time.
  We don’t know when a life will end, but when it’s over, it’s over.
  And what happens in between is the only thing that could have happened.
  Our life together is about learning and contributing and Gramma has gone now to where she can keep doing that.  
  Our space is open for sharing our thoughts and feelings about Gramma.
  Time for everyone to share.
  Placing flowers and pictures.
  Form a circle so we can all see each other and feel each other.
  Ring the bells.
   
  I was amazed at how easily it translated.  Shouldn’t really have been surprised.  I know it might seem a little bare, but when you are in deep grieving, those few words seem to take on so much more weight.  It seemed to work for my children, brought them some comfort and closure.  And I got to try it out again when our cat (16) died last month in the heat wave.  Seemed to work just as well the second time.
   
  I didn’t ever intend to become experienced in open space and death.  But life seems to have other ideas.  Two of my clients are hospices.  
   
  So this is a bit off the beaten track, but we often talk about living in open space.  This is just one little example of death in it.  And I know that some of us out there are working on integrating our open space life with our family life and this is one example of how I have used it with my children.  I have also used OST (Stammtische-style) for family meetings and while the three-year-old usually uses his two feet and is a butterfly, the six-year-olds totally groove on the post-its and the power. Hope it helps or inspires.
   
  Cheers,
  Wendy 
   
  Wendy Farmer-O'Neil
  Prospera Communications & Consulting Services
  250.713.2351/1.800.713.2351
  weblog: www.wordgravity.blogspot.com
   


  No virus found in this outgoing message.
Checked by AVG Free Edition.
Version: 7.5.484 / Virus Database: 269.12.2/966 - Release Date: 8/22/2007 9:05 AM

* * ========================================================== OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU ------------------------------ To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options, view the archives of oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu: http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs: http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist 



*
*
==========================================================
OSLIST at LISTSERV.BOISESTATE.EDU
------------------------------
To subscribe, unsubscribe, change your options,
view the archives of oslist at listserv.boisestate.edu:
http://listserv.boisestate.edu/archives/oslist.html

To learn about OpenSpaceEmailLists and OSLIST FAQs:
http://www.openspaceworld.org/oslist
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.openspacetech.org/pipermail/oslist-openspacetech.org/attachments/20070823/7a8db84b/attachment-0016.htm>