Death and Stars
Hannah and friends on her 3rd birthday
The picture shown here was Hannah (shorter girl up front) on her third birthday with three of her friends. I look at this photo every day and it makes me smile. Hannah would have turned 28 years old today. It’s hard to believe that she’s been gone longer than she lived on earth. These friends have grown, moved away, gotten married, and found important work. Hannah will forever be 12 years old.
Some days I miss her so much that all I feel is a deep, sad ache. But at other times, I fill my days with good things. I have done a lot of healing in the past sixteen years, since Hannah’s been gone. With time and distance from the ugliness of her brain cancer, I can appreciate the gifts of her life that she gave us. I continue to honor Hannah’s life and death with my grief work. Some may find it strange that I find this work rewarding, joyful, and most of all meaningful. Whether I’m walking with a companion, co-leading a grief group, or arranging flowers for care receivers, these times are some of the best parts of my days. (Island Volunteer Caregivers does a “Flowers from the Heart” program every summer where volunteers grow, arrange, and deliver bouquets to care receivers.)
Bouquets to be delivered to members of the summer grief group
My grief companions have become just as supportive to me as I initially was to them. The groups are much more powerful and intense, but for those who are ready to take on the work, they can be quite healing. This past winter, I co-led a group of bereaved parents, all of whom had lost adult sons. Their stories were tragic and dissimilar from Hannah’s death, with elements of sudden accidents, suicide, mental illness, and substance addiction. Even though the causes of death were different than what Hannah experienced, hearing these parents share stories and pictures of their loved ones at times triggered my own grief. I’ve found it vitally important to share my feelings with my co-leaders and to take extra special care of myself during those groups.
Long before I was leading grief groups or walking alongside other parents who were grieving, I was trying to survive the loss of Hannah. Besides journaling and meeting with other bereaved moms, I found solace in astrology, a practice I’ve been involved with for nearly 25 years. Understanding why Hannah’s soul was born to our family and what she’d come to learn and experience in this lifetime was immensely helpful in recovering from her death. Years after I’d studied her birth chart, I encountered another astrological tool related to the time of her death – a death chart.
When I was writing my book, A Soul Lives On, I encountered another astrologer who was beginning a practice of reading death charts. Unlike a birth chart , which is set from the time a person takes their first breath, a death chart is created when a person leaves their body. Linda Zlotnick (aka Moon) had begun this work following the death of her twin sister. After I read her book about her sister, I reached out to Moon, who has decades of experience as an astrologer.
She was kind and compassionate as I shared Hannah’s story, her life, and her death. Eventually, she read Hannah’s death chart and compared it to my birth chart, as these readings are as much about the state of the individual who is leaving their body as the person who is left to grieve.
Given that Hannah hadn’t been conscious for weeks before she died, I had these questions:
Was she suffering or in pain as she was dying? What was the state of her mind? Was she afraid to die? Did she know I was with her as she passed? Did she feel like her life had been complete or that her soul had accomplished what it wanted to? Being an astrologer, I looked at my watch when Hannah took her last breath, enabling Moon to create an exact death chart.
Moon was able to discern this information from this chart: The planet Pluto was rising, indicative of Hannah’s impending death and transformation. Pluto was also conjoined with the dwarf planet, Ceres. To the Greeks, Ceres was Demeter, who lost her daughter, Persephone, to the underworld. Moon interpreted this combination as symbolic that Hannah knew I was with her at the time of her death. Another chart feature, the North Node of the Moon (the soul’s evolutionary goal), was also connected to Pluto and Ceres, suggesting that at the time of her death, Hannah had completed her soul’s work. Additionally, the planets Neptune (related to one’s soul or spirit) and Chiron (related to a wound) were conjoined. Moon offered that Hannah’s wound – her illness – was instrumental to her spiritual path. This idea was compatible with what astrologer Steve Forrest had said about her cancer being part of her soul’s journey. As horrific as Hannah’s brain cancer had been, it was instrumental in reaching her spirit’s goal.
I found Moon’s reading of Hannah’s death chart to be comforting and affirming. I’ve recently been contemplating the use of Death Charts as an astrological tool for the bereaved. Perhaps this work is something I could incorporate with my grief work for those who are open to an astrology reading. Working with the bereaved has helped me turn the loss of Hannah into meaningful work for me, supporting others who don’t know yet how they’ll survive without their child. And now maybe I’ve found something new to offer people who are deeply in grief which combines my other passion of astrology. In the mystery of death, perhaps there are answers in the stars.