Lucinda
As I write this article, my grandmother lies on her deathbed. Today she gave the doctor the order to stop all heroic measures to prolong her life. The last time I saw her, 7 days ago, she did not speak to me. Her eyelids were barely open and her eyes appeared to be shifting color from gray to black. I counted 9 tubes and wires coming out of the right side of her body, she was hooked up to a room full of machines, doing the work that her organs could not. This is not the first time I have watched a close relative die since I became a Kem. When my wife and I started taking classes at the Earth Center, her father and my mother's sister were dying from very aggressive forms of brain and pancreas cancer.
Anyone who enters the Earth Center soon discovers that the Ancestors are central to Kemetic Spirituality. As Kemioo, (plural of Kem) our goal is to replicate the World of the Gods. As humans our only link to the Gods is our Ancestors, and honoring our Ancestors is an essential spiritual practice. Knowing how to honor and interact with my Ancestors is the one thing that has enabled me to watch my relatives die with grace.
I now know that physical death is just a transition, and that it is my responsibility to provide subsistence for all of my Ancestors while I still possess the gift of a body that they gave me. When asked how I am doing in the context of my grandmother's death, I respond that it's not her death that concerns me. I have raised my dead relatives to the level of my Ancestors, and they will welcome her. I speak to my Ancestors daily, and I will continue to give offerings until I die.
Death is not something which upsets me. Any turmoil that I am experiencing is the result of the needless suffering that my grandmother is enduring. My grandmother is a victim of modern medicine. When my father was born, the doctor inserted a needle full of painkillers into my grandmother's spine, claiming to ease the pain of birth. Because those pain killers were administered incorrectly, what they did instead was permanently paralyze an otherwise healthy young black woman from the waste down. As you too may have reasoned, my grandmother has suffered many other health problems over the years as a result of this mistake. Her stroke was a result of this carelessness and so was her heart irregularity leading to another surgery and pacemaker. She also had poor circulation that was compounded by her lack of mobility. This caused sores that would not heal and the eventual amputation of her leg. My mother is also blind in one eye as a result of being over oxygenated as a newborn baby.
During one conversation with my grandmother, she told me she knew many people who were killed by the hospital. In one study, HealthGroup reported that over 240,000 people were killed by hospitals in the U.S. over a 3 year period. That is over 200 people everyday killed by mistakes that the hospitals make. This is equivalent to a 747 commercial airplane crashing everyday, killing everyone inside. The question studies like this one from HealthGroup raise is why the modern world trusts its health to an industry which causes so much death and suffering.
I don't hear reports that herbal healers, Reiki practitioners, acupuncturists, or other alternative and traditional healers kill 200 people a day. Yet when, as a healer, I give my clients advice, they still feel compelled to "check with the doctor". Hypocrisy and contradiction are the corruptions destroying humans at the rate of 200 each day! To everyone reading this article who is a non-western Healer, I appreciate your service. To everyone else, please explore alternative, traditional, and herbal methods of maintaining and restoring health. You can start at www.ankhkasta.org and www.buddhahands.com for more information.
