Facing Death and Dying

Shanti’s trainings during the early years of the AIDS crisis focused a great deal on death and dying. As more and more treatments became available and people living with HIV/AIDS found their lives extended the tone of Shanti’s trainings changed. But, the realities of death, illness, and loss are inescapable when it comes to the work Shanti does. In this image Dr. Gary Walsh sits with former executive director Jim Geary. Gary Walsh was a respected and popular psychologist in San Francisco who specialized in couples therapy specifically for gay men, a rarity in the 1980s. In the final years of his life, Gary spoke publicly on behalf of people with AIDS, debated Jerry Falwell on live television, and was part of a core group of men with AIDS who organized the first Candlelight March. By the early 1990s, the Candlelight March went from being a San Francisco annual event to an international one. This specific conversation between Walsh and Jim Geary was Gary’s final appearance before his death. People with AIDS like Gary Walsh and Bobby Reynolds played a major role in speaking at trainings, a tradition carried on from the earliest Shanti trainings where Charles Garfield brought dying patients to speak at the trainings.

You can learn more about Gary Walsh and see segments of this interview on YouTube here.

You can read Gary Walsh’s BAR Obituary here.

Death Personalization Exercise:

“Over a year has passed since you first heard the diagnosis of AIDS in your doctor’s office. You have become progressively weaker and are now feeling very sick. You know that there is limited time remaining in your life. Call each person in your life, one by one, into your room. Say anything you would like to say to each one. Anything that you might have left unsaid, anything that you want to repeat. Imagine each person’s words to you. Then one by one, say goodbye to all the people you love and who love you. You are feeling very tired now. Just moving seems to take monumental effort, and suddenly you begin to feel that it is time to die. Imagine yourself standing at the opening of a tunnel. Enter the tunnel and proceed at your own pace as quickly or as slowly as you like. As you go through the tunnel, try to observe what it is like and what emotions you are feeling…behind you there is a light through which is visible a familiar scene. Doctors and nurses are working over your body trying to bring it back to life. You see the body that was once yours. What do you feel as you observe their efforts? Do you want them to succeed? As you realize that the doctors and nurses have not been able to revive you, what do you observe being done with your body? Is this what you would want done? What are the next events to take place? Is there a memorial service, a cremation, a burial? If there is a memorial service, what are your feelings as you listen to the words chosen to describe your life? Do you feel that they truly represent you? What do you experience as you observe the faces of the mourners and the people present at the memorial service? Is there anybody who isn’t there? Now that the memorial service is at an end, what awaits you on your journey through the tunnel? The exercise is now at an end, and the picture before you is beginning to fade. As the light dims, realize that this has been an exercise. Take as much time as you need to return to your body, to this room, to the present. Take as much time as you like, and when you are ready, open your eyes.”

“I’ll never forget on day three, they had a K.S. panel. Back then the two big killers in San Francisco was K.S. and pneumocystis. So, they had a panel on K.S. and these men got up on the…well it was a chapel, so they got up on what would have been the altar. And they all took their shirts off and they were covered with K.S. And I will never forget that moment. I’m pretty sure…it was thirty three years ago, Sunday. That would have been the third day of the training…And I just could not believe what it looked like to have K.S. all over your body. What was happening inside of me, I was afraid of what was happening, I was afraid of what was being asked of me…But, I began to realize that this project and what they were asking people to do, I was going to be able to do it.”
-Ed Wolf