How to Get Ready for Death

When my beloved aunt Avis was dying — a lifelong smoker, lung cancer struck in her early 60s — she asked me a question from her hospital bed that I wasn’t prepared for: “How do I get ready to die?”

Like many people, Avis didn’t really have a religion. She only had a few weeks left to live, but as an adult, she never went to church and didn’t pay much attention to anything even remotely spiritual. A good person and a hard-charging, successful executive, before most women were allowed to succeed in business, she had devoted her life to her work. 

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Raised by her parents as a Lutheran, however, she clearly still had internalized fears of what she’d been taught during her impressionable girlhood. As her death approached, those fears came back. When she was young, the minister had loudly warned everyone in the church pews that they would all face the terrible wrath of an unforgiving God on their personal judgment day.

Now, with her mortality staring her down, she wondered: What if that was true?

My aunt told me, her hoarse voice actually quaking, and despite the fact that she hadn’t seen the inside of a church since childhood, she still remembered the exact wording of the passages from the Book of Revelation the minister had quoted:

 And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works.

And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works.

And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.

And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire.

I could tell she felt terrified. On the brink of death, her physical life slipping away, Avis, who had helped raise me and who I loved dearly, wanted reassurance and consolation in her final days. Her fears plagued her, and she asked for my help.

So I told her what Baha’is believe about that great mystery beyond the gate of earthly life, that death: “… bestoweth joy, and is the bearer of gladness. It conferreth the gift of everlasting life.”

I told her that in his book The Hidden Words, Baha’u’llah, the prophet and founder of the Baha’i Faith, revealed this hopeful passage: 

O Son of the Supreme! I have made death a messenger of joy to thee. Wherefore dost thou grieve? I made the light to shed on thee its splendor. Why dost thou veil thyself therefrom? 

I told her that this wondrous theme runs throughout the Baha’i writings and teachings — that death is not to be feared, but welcomed and that all people, not just a select few, will ascend to the next stage of their soul’s existence after the body perishes.

I told her about Baha’u’llah’s assurance to humanity that heaven and hell aren’t places but states of consciousness: “Where is Paradise, and where is Hell?’ Say: ‘The one is reunion with Me; the other thine own self …” (By the word “Me,” Baha’u’llah is referring to God).

I told her the Baha’i teachings promise that the Creator loves and forgives us all:

The greatness of His [God’s] mercy surpasseth the fury of His wrath, and His grace encompasseth all who have been called into being and been clothed with the robe of life, be they of the past or of the future.

At first, when I answered my aunt Avis’s questions with these concepts from the Baha’i writings, she seemed skeptical. Still conditioned to think of death as something to fear and avoid, she told me that the reference to a “lake of fire” in the Book of Revelation frightened her tremendously. She did believe in an existence after this physical one — but thought her un-churched, non-religious life might consign her to some fiery hell. 

Then I read her this quotation from the writings of Baha’u’llah:

And now concerning thy question regarding the soul of man and its survival after death. Know thou of a truth that the soul, after its separation from the body, will continue to progress until it attaineth the presence of God, in a state and condition which neither the revolution of ages and centuries, nor the changes and chances of this world, can alter. It will endure as long as the Kingdom of God, His sovereignty, His dominion and power will endure. It will manifest the signs of God and His attributes, and will reveal His loving-kindness and bounty. 

RELATED: The Hidden Words: A Spiritual Guidebook for Life and Death

I assured her that the lake of fire and the permanent death described in the Book of Revelation were not real — instead, the Baha’i teachings assure us that they function as symbols, meant to allude to spiritual realities rather than physical conditions. Abdu’l-Baha, speaking to a Bible class in New York City in 1912, explained:

It is difficult to comprehend even the words of a philosopher; how much more difficult it is to understand the Words of God. The divine Words are not to be taken according to their outer sense. They are symbolical and contain realities of spiritual meaning. For instance, in the book of Solomon’s songs you will read about the bride and bridegroom. It is evident that the physical bride and bridegroom are not intended. Obviously, these are symbols conveying a hidden and inner significance. In the same way the Revelations of St. John are not to be taken literally, but spiritually. These are the mysteries of God. It is not the reading of the words that profits you; it is the understanding of their meanings. Therefore, pray God that you may be enabled to comprehend the mysteries of the divine Testaments.

Perhaps, I suggested to her, that lake of fire simply means the regretful inner realization in the afterlife that a soul could have spiritually evolved further while in this life. Perhaps the symbol of fire can also stand for the power of purification, for transformation, and regeneration.

When my aunt Avis stopped breathing several days later, she passed into the next world voluntarily, with a tentative sense of welcoming anticipation, and with a lot less fear and trepidation. The Baha’i writings and concepts I shared with her eased her anxieties, and made her path to eternity, I dearly hope, a smooth and joyous one. 

I look forward to seeing her in that heavenly world one day.