What is a Dark Night of the Soul?

The period of 2018–2019 was a rebirth for me. However, when we think of rebirths we often forget to consider the deaths that come before.

In 2018, my grandfather died.

I’d been caring for him and my grandmother. He had smoldering leukemia that seemed to go on forever, but in the end, only lasted for months.

It was agony.

As I worked my job and a new promotion, and was a carer simultaneously, I began to struggle. An unhealthy relationship didn’t help.

Frequently driving the hour to my grandparents’ place, and my lack of sleep when there, trying to meet my grandpa’s needs in the night, to hold his hand against the pain and the loneliness, the sadness, providing palliative care, as it were, became too much.

I was entirely unprepared — the culture we live in isn’t prepared. There aren’t enough community measures in place to support us.

No one talks about death. Or many of the other countless important things that truly matter.

I did what I could, stroking his hand as he asked to be put to sleep.

But it took its toll.

—

About this time, my right thigh began to feel hot with shooting pains and my shin bone hurt for no apparent reason as I walked between my grandpa’s room and mine.

I’d occasionally see my reflection in the mirror, a night-time ghost, pale and awake in the darkness of the night, the moon an accompanying sliver in the glass behind me.

My leg hurt and felt hot with nerve pain, but there weren’t any obvious wounds to be seen on the outside.

And there wasn’t time to care about it; about me.

I ignored it with misgivings and continued as best I could.

Deda could no longer shuffle to the toilet by holding onto both doors, as he had been doing, and when I got him there, seemed to go all blank. He couldn’t remember which door led to his bedroom and had begun to accidentally use Babi’s toothbrush.

In the night, he called out repeatedly, unable to sleep, to think, to remember where he was. His speech became laboured and he got angry, shouting at the ceiling. One next day, I gave him a washcloth, sat him atop the bath. I held a lavurek with soap and warm water as I helped him sit upright, letting him wash himself. It made him smile, the attempt. He said he felt fresh, and all the while I kept thinking of The Simpsons, when Grandpa Simpson says, “Stay above the equator,” while Deda battled to hold himself upright on its edge, immensely happy to be able to do something for himself.

The nurses that came to check on him daily had no cure, and sometimes, no energy. My favorite; the loud messy blonde with a cigarette-cracked voice, would at least bring a winning smile; a few witty words that he’d respond to with a grunt as she measured his blood pressure, and wound up his swollen feet. I wished so much that there was something I could do. Instead, I got so sad. Lord, I got sad and angry and tired and skinny; my nervous system overloaded, sending signals in small, yet not-so-subtle ways: the burning in my legs, the twitching, the sleeplessness, the panic.

I felt the same helplessness as Deda; I wanted my mother to arrive from Switzerland already because it was all so heavy. Yet I could tell that certain actions were rooted in his long-term memory even if he couldn’t process them. The familiar feel of my hand in his, me turning on the lamp for him, telling him what day it was and what we were going to do tomorrow, putting his glasses aside so he wouldn’t knock them over; always reminding him to read the clock.

But it didn’t matter how many times I told him to look up and to the left; he didn’t seem to understand time anymore, couldn’t read the hand-written notes I taped to a chair for him and placed right next to his bed and into his direct line of sight. IT’S BEDTIME. I’M NEXT DOOR. TOMORROW IS SATURDAY. He still couldn’t remember.

The night he couldn’t remember my name, I cried into my pillow.

“Hello? Is anyone…there?” he asked. I got up and went to him.

“Oh!” He grabbed my hand.

“Yes.” I squeezed.

“…so fast.” I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I couldn’t sleep, that I was always waiting for the next frightened cry.

“I need pills.” I administered the painkillers and then appraised if he could take another sleeping pill.

He shifted position and tried to look at me.

“I want to sleep,” he said, emphatically. I decided I’d give him one more, passing him another sleeping pill and a glass of water.

“No. Sleep.” He said and pushed my hand away, frustrated and angry.

The reality of what he was saying took a while to sink in.

“Sleep.”

I shuddered in my nightdress, the street lamps casting shadows into the early November night. His head was small, his body thinner. A bird with a frail neck and white-gray feathery hair. I went back to my room and unscrewed a small bottle of rum, searching for numbness in a nightcap. I had never felt so helpless and hopeless myself; my anxiety was sky-high, my empathy overwhelming. I could not separate myself from him, from anyone I loved. I felt all that he felt; the despair, the confusion, the fear, the end, always looming just ahead. Walls can both hurt us and protect us, but no walls at all are agony.

Around this time, I decided to start seeing a therapist. The first one I tried wasn’t very good, but she did give me one gift: she told me about boundaries and having a Self (or not) and developmental trauma. Somehow, at 33 and for the first time in my life, through this Dark Night of the Soul, I began to wake.

And what I saw was that when life was this fragile, when life does indeed just end one day — what about my life? And how I was living?

And so I began to wake. And the awakening was brutal.

If this was all limited, did I really want my job? The relationship? And what was I even doing here?

My body was sending me signals about all that I had to process, all that was going on. According to the now-famous Dr. Mate, in a book I found later on my healing journey in a cute Parisian bookshop, my body was saying no.

—

Through our Dark Nights of the Soul, we often experience extremely difficult things that test our faith and are said to be a kind of death — of the ego, of the unhelpful parts of ourselves.

But there was no way that I’d let my grandfather’s suffering remain an un-meaningful end. There had to be a purpose; there has to be, and I found it in myself.

Sometimes, parts of ourselves need to die so that other better parts can be reborn.

It is easier to float, to blame, to stay a victim. Be carried by other events and people until it isn’t. Until that current takes us so far away from who we are, that our lives become excruciating.

In our most difficult times, we are also broken open to so much awareness. Connected to the source more than any other time — we are acutely aware of the pain and yet the beauty of the new thing, the new us, forming.

More true and more aligned with our souls and our guidance.

That calm insistent guidance must be listened to, taken seriously, and acted upon. Or the universe will keep teaching us the same lessons, over and over again, until we change.

Dark Nights of the Soul, as awful as they are, can become a gift. They break us open to rebirth — to transformation. ❤