The Contraction and Expansion of Grief
Alex Patton, Charlie and River Echeverria
Lessons From Dying Without Fear
During the harvest season, after the fall equinox, the world makes a shift from that of expansion (the abundance of sunlight and the harvest) to that of contraction (darkness, quiet, and rest). I’m currently in a season of grief so the transition from light to dark feels exacerbated this year. This summer, 2 important people in my life passed away and it makes me wonder, how does the body process grief? How does fear of death affect the body and our ability to heal?
As I write this essay, I’m currently on a plane to Asheville, North Carolina, because, one week ago, my cousin’s husband, Alex, died suddenly. He drowned in a lake. It’s completely shocking and totally tragic. Alex was 34 years old and full of life. He was the kind of guy that instantly made everyone he met feel like a friend. He had impeccable Southern hospitality, and he was always game for an adventure or a dance party. He was the perfect match for my cousin and a cherished addition to our family.
On July 17th, my Aunt Sophie died of leukemia. She was 63 years old. While I was always close with my aunt (we actually did a yoga teacher training at the Teton Yoga Shala together 10 years prior to me moving my practice into the space), once she received her diagnosis, we grew a lot closer. Her death was one of the most profound experiences of my life – more on this later.
Both Alex and Aunt Sophie were authentically themselves, which constantly inspired me. Creativity and self-expression were cornerstones in both of their lives. Aunt Sophie was always writing poetry, painting something, or making movies. Alex made his own clothes and jewelry. Plus, he built amazing things like tree weaves and saunas. I’m so grateful I could call them both family.
Despite their similar inspiring traits, their deaths couldn’t be more different. Aunt Sophie’s death, though unbelievably sad, was slow and beautiful. Alex’s death, on the other hand, was sudden and tragic. It sits differently because there are many unanswered questions. Alex’s death is the kind that makes you grab your loved ones and hold them tight, because you remember just how quickly things can change.
With any hard or bad situation, I try to find a silver lining. There is always a lesson to be learned. A lesson that will make me stronger. A lesson that will make me a better person. My hope today is to share some of the lessons I gleaned from my Aunt Sophie’s journey - which is full to the brim with lessons of healing, living in beauty, discovering magic, and deep connection - in hopes we can all expand in wisdom and grace during this season of contraction, of darkness, of fall and winter.
Two years ago, Sophie was diagnosed with leukemia during routine blood work. We were shocked because she was only 61, had no symptoms, and lived a very healthy lifestyle. She didn’t just follow the book by eating her vegetables and always exercising. She was the complete holistic picture of health - fostering community, expressing her creativity, and honoring her divine feminine energy. She instantly knew that she didn’t want to treat her condition through chemotherapy. That just wasn’t her path - she never did things the standard way. What was interesting is that she didn’t want to fight the cancer via natural methods either. She didn’t want to fight it at all. Her plan was to love and honor her body, to stay endlessly curious about what would happen (akin to my philosophy of ‘riding the tide’). We became so close during this time is because I was someone she could share this journey with judgement free. The truth is, I wanted my aunt to take the chemotherapy. If she had there is a very good chance she would be here today. However, as a physician, I also know that it doesn’t matter what I want. It’s my job to honor the patient’s wishes, meeting them where they’re at every step of the way. If her goal isn’t to live as long as possible, but to live as beautiful of a life as possible, then okay, we ride the tide together and see where it takes us.
I already told you how this story ends; however, although Sophie died, she also healed and lived life to the fullest. She did more work in the healing sphere than anyone I know. She looked her shadows straight in the eye. At the end, she didn’t obey fear. She appreciated beauty and authenticity. She didn’t obey ‘shoulds.’ Instead, she followed the path of curiosity, love, and whole-hearted gratitude.
A significant time in her healing journey was when she did hallucinogenic substances at her house, alone. She had done Ayahuasca once before, in a group setting, but said that upon taking it, she soon found herself the most hilarious person in the entire world. She couldn’t stop laughing and proceeded to laugh hysterically for hours on end. This led to discord in the group as they unsurprisingly found her rather annoying during their deep existential trips.
During the solo trip at her house, she told us the story of how she connected with a constellation of stars and instantly saw a geometric grid present throughout all of time and space. She considered this to be her connection to Christ Consciousness. By sensing it, just for that short period of time, she knew that she wasn’t alone and instead was part of something greater. She deemed herself ‘healed!’.
After her proclamation that she was healed, many of us sat there dazed and confused about what this meant. Did she really cure her leukemia? Well, no…. she didn’t cure her disease, but that didn’t mean she didn’t heal on multiple other levels. For example, it prompted her to release a lot of past traumas and trauma patterns. I mention this story because it was after that, that her conviction strengthened. She came into her authenticity of living in beauty with unwavering integrity. It was palpable. As a result, she said that all the trauma drama had faded away. By her not taking the traditional path, we all knew on some level that our time with her was short. As a result, so many of those past toxic patterns with herself and in relationships just drifted away.
In July, she shared a deep desire to visit Jackson Hole, to visit me and her sister (another one of my aunts – her sister who also lives here), and to swim in the cold waters around the Tetons again. She had become considerably weaker recently, so my other aunt flew out to drive her here. On the way, it became clear that her cancer was really catching up with her and the pain was becoming unbearable. They changed their route and drove to her daughter Kelly’s house, which was the plan of where she would go at the end of her life. She started hospice care immediately.
In passing, we had discussed that when the end was near, I would go and be with her. Now, here it was. When the rubber meets the road, that proved to be a lot more difficult than I had anticipated. I have a toddler, a husband, a house, patients, a business – the list goes on… but there was a burning sensation in my soul that I couldn’t ignore. I had to go.
When I arrived at Kelly’s house, I felt tired, out of sorts from flying, and kind of at a loss. Sophie was still totally cognizant, but very uncomfortable. She told me that she was scared her body would heal from this illness, and she would continue to live, but at a much lower quality of life. She told me she was ready to go to the train station, but I wasn’t sure what that meant. On the show Yellowstone, to go to the train station means to go to the roadside cliff where the Dutton’s toss the dead bodies of their enemies, but to my knowledge, she never watched the series Yellowstone, so that couldn’t be what she meant. Until that moment, it had been miserably hot in Colorado, but a rainstorm had come in and completely cleared the air, cooling everything down. I went on a walk and prayed. I asked why I had been drawn to come here so strongly. Luckily, it all came to me in a flash that I needed to hold a ceremony for her, to help her transition to the next realm.
When I got back, Kelly and I ate dinner. While she was cleaning up the kitchen, I went upstairs and cleaned Aunt Sophie’s room. I lit three candles around her bed and pulled the roses from ‘get well soon’ bouquets and laid them around her. A few years ago, she gifted Kelly a pair of owl wings that she had harvested from our family ranch in Jackson Hole. We used those to smudge her, call in her guardian angels, spirit guides and ancestors. She told us that there were lots of relatives waiting to greet her. They were very busy preparing for the celebration of her arrival. I sat at her feet, cleaning them with warm water and then giving her a foot massage. Kelly sat at her head, stroking her hair and face. We anointed her with blue lotus oil and massaged her beautiful hands. We sang to her and told her all the things we loved about her. We told her over and over again how amazing her body was and that it was going to help her as she transitioned to the next realm. The labored, almost haunting breathing pattern she had been experiencing softened. Her face, though still showing that she was on the brink of death, now looked at peace. Words can’t begin to explain the extraordinary things I witnessed during the ceremony that evening.
I had no agenda that day. After our ceremony I felt tired and that it was time for me to go. I felt like I had done what I needed to do. I told Kelly that most people die just before dawn, as if maximizing time on earth without greeting a new day. That night, Kelly recognized that something had shifted and felt that Sophie’s time was short. Kelly called her brother to come over. They laid down on either side of Sophie, praying together. Kelly recalls that shortly after they drifted off to sleep, she woke up when one of the candles went out (it had not run out of wax and was sheltered from the wind). A few minutes later, the 2nd candle went out, and then a few minutes later, the 3rd. The transition to greater darkness woke up her brother also. And then a couple of minutes later, Sophie took her last breath. She transitioned into a higher realm that morning surrounded by two of her children with the fresh cool morning breeze taking her soul on its next adventure.
Kelly called me right away and I remember feeling a great sense of relief. It was Sophie’s time to go and now she had. In a way that many can only dream about. I’ve been part of a lot of deaths during my residency – mostly tragic, because they were steeped with fear. This death was so profoundly different, and I have boundless gratitude for the opportunity to be a part of it. Feeling relieving joy and extreme sadness is quite a juxtaposition.
Grief is a hard, complex, and disconcerting feeling to embody. It’s one we want to run away from, it’s one we want to escape from, but at same time we tend to lean in because it brings us closer to the loved one we lost. It reminds us that our emotions do not follow a linear timeline. Unlike physical exhaustion, that you can sleep off, or mental exhaustion that you can escape from through the use of vices, emotional exhaustion hits you like a tidal wave when you are least expecting it, and grants you amnesty at the oddest times. Reflecting now, I see that my losses mirror the transition of the seasons, there was a great expansion in lessons learned, families gathered, gratitude expressed. But at the exact same time, the contraction is there, tangible, and painful. And all we can do in seasons of grief is keep riding the tide, the ebbs, the flows and everything in between.
Charlie, Aunt Sophie, Charlie’s brother Jack, Charlie’s husband, Neil, Charlie’s dad, Paul
