Bás Sona

I often close correspondence or an email with the term "bás sona," as I did with my first post here. In Irish, it loosely translates to "blessed death" and has been used as a blessing of sorts. To say "bás sona" to another means "May you have a blessed or peaceful death." So, what, then, is such a death?

Based upon my experience of being with the dying, it's my opinion that three basic elements improve the possibility that you may indeed have a bás sona.

Lean into suffering

The first relates to suffering and how we respond to it. Often, when faced with suffering--when our imagined or hoped-for version of our life does not match our reality --we try to deal with that pain by ignoring it, stuffing it away somewhere in our psyche, self-medicating with alcohol, food, shopping, or endless social media scrolling. Instead, I suggest we lean into the pain, which is a Celtic practice. By facing the pain head-on, we look for the underlying lesson or message in the suffering and offer ourselves the chance for transformation, growth, and healing. Importantly, we need to do this work before we are on our deathbed.

Memento mori

Secondly, our culture teaches us to keep death at arm's length while we are living, to believe that somehow, magically, we can ignore our mortality. Doing so increases the likelihood that we will be completely unprepared and overwhelmed when our death arrives and causes unnecessary and prolonged grief for our family. In the Middle Ages, a societal construct called memento mori ("remember death") was a way for a person to remind themselves every single day of their own mortality. The practice was not considered morbid; rather, it was life-affirming. Perhaps we should each have our own version of memento mori.

Ease spiritual pain

Lastly, spiritual pain is the most difficult type of pain to treat. The Sacred Art of Living Center defines spiritual pain by its four qualities: forgiveness, relatedness, meaning, and hope. (Scared Art of Living Spiritual Health Assessment). Our medications don't work. We should not try to sedate what can't be sedated nor mask what shouldn't be masked with our medications. Studies have shown that most spiritual pain involves forgiveness issues, and forgiveness pain is often referred to as "the common cold" of spiritual pain. So, begin to practice forgiveness now. Forgive yourself, forgive others, forgive the Universe, and forgive God.

I believe that paying attention to these three simple tasks increases the likelihood that we will have the type of blessed death that the late Irish teacher, author, and poet John O'Donohue wished for all of us:

"...That when you lie down to it, you will be able to do it with grace, with great serenity, and with a lovely courage…and with a little excitement about where the new journey is about to take you."

Bás sona.