🕊️ Before You Read: This piece touches on grief, loss, and letting go. If you are going through your own journey of mourning, please take care of yourself. Pause when you need to. You are not alone. 🌿
I share the story of my mother’s dying — two days before her birthday in July 2025; of overwhelm and closeness, a night of thunderstorms, what came after, and how love and gratitude held the space.
Staying high-vibration in grief: how does that work?
In response to a comment in which a woman wrote about losing her beloved gran, the German astrologer Silke Schäfer posted on Instagram at the end of August: “Yes, as human beings we grieve. But the soul is in joy. And your love, into eternity, can now nourish the entire quantum field. Stay high-vibration in your grief. You can do it.”
These words moved me deeply, because I have just lost my mother. Had I managed to remain “high-vibration” in my grief? What does that even mean?
Being high-vibration in grief does not mean you’re not allowed to be sad. For me it means letting love be larger than the pain; letting gratitude resonate, even when the heart is breaking; keeping grief alive rather than freezing. It’s a double movement: I feel the pain and yet stay connected to love. I keep my heart open even in grief, rather than hardening it.
The weeks before my mother’s death: between acceptance and overwhelm
I went through a wide spectrum of emotions: acceptance. Anger at life and at the tasks it set me. Guilt because I didn’t live up to my own standards. Fear that I wouldn’t be able to withstand the demands placed on me for long. Unease about the changes in my mother’s personality before she died: nights when I felt a little spooked because she spoke with force about things that hadn’t happened — at least not in my world. Nights when she insisted she wasn’t in her own bed, that I wasn’t understanding her; days and nights when she sensed another presence in the room. She could never tell me who it was. I thought of my grandmother almost daily and felt she had come to accompany her daughter.
At times I felt helpless, overwhelmed, and completely left alone with it all. And yet I was there every day and every night, moved in with her for several weeks so that in her growing helplessness, which she found very hard to accept, she would not be alone. I could not have reconciled it with my conscience or my heart not to take that step, because our bond was too deep.
There were stretches when I could barely think straight: community nursing service, palliative care team, GP, pharmacy delivery services — far too many different people coming and going. The Medical Service only approved a higher level of care for my mother a few days before her death — the slyness of the first assessor, evidently to save the care insurers money, would be a story in itself. I learned a great deal about the German care system. (I read recently that we could solve all money-related problems in this country at a stroke if the billions currently going into military build-up were invested in pensions, healthcare, care services, education, and infrastructure.)
Our GP had arranged for a palliative care team, but apart from the very warm palliative doctor, they were of little help. “Hello, how are you today?” — five minutes later the constantly changing carers were gone again. There was hardly any sense of care. Thankfully, after some teething problems, we did have two truly kind, deeply committed carers from the nursing service with us twice a week; they took my mother into their hearts quickly — and she did the same with them.
Soon after, the palliative team, in consultation with us, applied for a hospice place. The chance of getting one of the few places was slim. I had promised my mother: no more hospital — the first admission a few weeks earlier had left her traumatized — and certainly no care home in the last weeks or months of her life. (I increasingly understand why older people don’t want to be there. It isn’t a dignified environment so much as the warehousing of the elderly, no matter how hard devoted carers try.)
Our agreement — and the old patterns that remained
In our first week together we decided we would wait for death together, and make things as comfortable as possible in this heavy situation. But the daily challenges and the high tension often got in the way. Old mother–daughter wounds reopened — also because we were together around the clock. “Why do we still have to hurt each other?” my mother asked out loud at one point. To the very end we oscillated between closeness and gratitude for one another on the one hand, and tension and a not consistently loving way of dealing with each other on the other. Here was our old theme: closeness? Yes. Radical honesty? Absolutely. Love? Without question. But a tender, more affectionate way of being with each other — that soft holding between mother and daughter — was rare and brief.
The night she died
Around 9 p.m. I checked on her again. She was breathing and seemed to be sleeping peacefully. I lay back down. Around 2 a.m. I woke up. Outside it was pouring, wind whipping through the open windows, rain hammering against them. I found my mother sitting upright, slumped to one side. Her mouth slightly open, her arms bent. One leg off the bed, the other bent up on the mattress.
I knew at once: she was dead. Tears. “Mum, oh Mum.”
I didn’t dare move her and called 112 (112 is the European emergency number, available across the EU). “How do you know she’s dead? Are you medically trained?” — No. But there is no doubt: as with my father fourteen years ago, you can see when the soul has gone. What remains is the shell — like after a shedding; that’s how it felt. The resident had left her temple.
Six people — paramedics and a doctor — came and confirmed that she had died. They laid her back in bed and asked me to inform the GP or the palliative doctor during the day so that everything could be formally certified.
I was very glad I had visited the funeral director my mother had chosen for herself, just a few days earlier. I knew I would be able to reach someone there even in the middle of the night; that if I wished I could keep her body laid out at home for up to 48 hours; and that, alongside my parents’ marriage certificate, I would need my father’s death certificate and my mother’s pension insurance number to finalize the paperwork.
I didn’t want to get anyone out of bed in the middle of the night and waited until daylight. I did, however, call my child. For hours we spoke on speakerphone — with my mother in the room — about his gran, gathering beautiful memories. Later my (adult) child told me that my guttural sobbing, at the moment I broke the news, had moved him deeply. (I didn’t even notice that I was crying).
After daybreak, first the palliative doctor came, then the funeral directors.
Afterwards
Four weeks after my mother’s death, I finally had everything finished: the funeral, clearing the flat, canceling all sorts of contracts, closing accounts, re-letting and the final inspection — the tenancy automatically passed to me — paying invoices.
In between I understood, bit by bit, what “grieving at a high vibration” means: physically and mentally I was utterly exhausted — and at the same time I found so much love in me, which stayed and stays.
Now my home is full of things that remind me of her: her moon calendar, her singing bowls and tingsha, the little floor lamp, the candle arrangement, family papers, a treasure chest of old photos. Not a day passes that I don’t think of her. She is the person with whom I was connected longest and most closely — alongside, in a different way, my child. We had our issues — yes. But the radical openness and absolute reliability are still alive between us. There was hardly anything she didn’t know about me, and vice versa.
When I learned that, a day after her death, around 6 p.m., she had completed her life review, I accompanied her journey — saw her in my mind’s eye traveling along the Milky Way — with song, dance, many tears and, at the same time, joy.
A good friend put it perfectly at the funeral: “She did a damn good job.”
Yes, she truly did.
And my child — whose attitude and support after his grandmother’s death made me especially proud — said: “However much we stood by Gran in the end doesn’t come close to what she did for the two of us.” ❤️
Signs from the “Otherworld”
My mother promised to make herself known from beyond the veil — from the Spirit World — by sending me a sign. - I’m waiting.
Mum, you have put down your life on earth and started the journey back to the spirit world.
Anyone who has read Night Dance will recognize this line from Logan in Book One. My mother — an incredible Night Dance fan — loved it.
Shortly before she died, I read to her from Book Two. We made it to Chapter Five. While I was waiting for the funeral directors, I finished the chapter for her. I have recordings that are now among my most precious possessions: I am reading; she is lying in the care bed the palliative team had arranged in the living room, and every now and then she makes a gentle, approving sound when a passage touches her.
I love you, Mum.
You were a remarkable human being and a mother as wonderful as you were —
in the very best sense — challenging. Your little plaque reading “Bestest Mum” was passed on to me with a smile by your grandchild, despite the lessons and trials he and I still move through
together.
I know: when my number is up, it will be YOU who comes to get me.
Until then. In eternal love.
❤️🕯️🤍♾️❤️
P.S. If these lines resonate with you, feel free to share
your thoughts with me in the comments.
You are not alone. Even when it feels that way.
Sometimes words awaken emotions that feel too heavy to hold alone.
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