The Last Chapter

Hi Everyone. This is Sharón, Tamar's sister. Tamar died yesterday, Sunday, September 12th, at around 3:30 in the afternoon. This is the story of her last day here, from my perspective...

Saturday night we finally got Tamar's pain under control. She slept soundly through the night with a very high dosage of pain medication. Sunday morning she was not able to communicate with us much, but she could see and hear us, and communicate a little. Me, my mom and dad, and Nathan were all here. We each got to have small conversations or moments with Tamar throughout the morning. At around 3:30 she was showing signs that she was moving toward death, and we all circled around. I cradled her head in my hand and my mom sang to her as she went on her journey from earth to somewhere else. We were so lucky that Sandra, the amazingly awesome hospice nurse, was with us through everything, holding us as well as Tamar.

Nathan found out later that a group of Tamar's friends from Dancing Rabbit had gone out on the land and had a circle to celebrate her life. Right around the time that she died, they all yelled out "We love you Tamar!!"

I feel like Tamar's death was beautiful and peaceful. Shortly after she died the expression on her face looked like she was lying in the sun on a warm rock, smiling a little with her eyes closed.

Our tentative plan right now is that we will be driving Tamar's body to Dancing Rabbit, where we will bury her and plant an Asian Pear tree over her, and have a funeral ritual. That was her request. Later we will have a memorial service in Massachusetts.

Many many thanks to all of you for the love, support, magic, prayers, and everything else you sent to Tamar and to us along this journey. It meant so much to be held in the embrace of Tamar's amazing, loving community.

Tamar told me that after she dies, I should read her journal/sketchbook. I want to leave you with a small excerpt from what she wrote:

"I would like to become free of this restrictive cocoon but I don't know what that will look like. Free and alive or free and dead. Either way free." --Tamar