Recently, I heard someone say that living is the only condition with a guaranteed 100 percent mortality rate.

And, indeed, it would be a rare person who reaches adulthood, even early adulthood, without having experienced the death of someone important to them.

Sometimes I feel, as a part-time hospice worker, I think about death and the dying process a little more than most people. But I know that’s not true. Everyone thinks about death, whether in the choices we make (wear a seat belt, don’t drink and drive), our plans for the future, or our hopes and dreams for our loved ones. It’s deeply embedded in our consciousness, and some psychologists would argue that fear of death is a governing force in our life.

In Northern California, where I live, the last couple of decades have brought the proliferation of roadside memorials, the visual reminders of accidental death. My yoga studio is about five miles from my home, on a stretch of two-lane rural highway that is impacted by fog, wind, deer, and reckless, impatient drivers. Along those five miles there are at least four or five roadside memorials.

And recently, I’ve also noticed a trend in automobile decals that commemorate an individual’s life and death.

Several weeks ago, a friend died. I knew her as part of a group of friends, and she was a central figure, important as a friend, confidant, author, healer, and – for one newly married couple – a matchmaker.

Analea McGarey‘s death was both expected and sudden, intimate and remote. It was expected because we knew she was failing and treatment had been stopped. It was sudden because the changes started soon after she took a vacation with friends. Photos from the trip show her looking happy and vibrant. It was also sudden because she was only 58 years old. It was intimate because those close to her did an admirable job of keeping everyone updated as her condition and consciousness changed. But it was also remote for many of us, because in the final weeks of her life, she went to her mother’s house, in another state, and passed away there, surrounded by her family.

I felt a twinge of frustration during the final weeks, because, while we were relatively new and not intimate friends, I have cared for many people at the end of their life, most of them strangers. And I think that the people who know me best understand that physically helping – doing – is how I deal with my own emotions during tough times. This is also how I like to offer aid to others. So while I’ve bathed and cared for people in their very last hours, read and sang to them (from their own spiritual traditions, I might add), and sat silently, holding their hand, I could offer nothing in this situation. I could only be a witness, and that, from a distance. On the day that she died, unaware of her transition, I lit a candle in her honor, and taught a restorative yoga workshop, holding her in my thoughts.

Now, I like to think that my small candle flame helped her soul find the way to its next destination.

During the years I wrote professionally, especially in public relations, I wrote innumerable letters to be signed by others. I can honestly say, that each and every one of them was as equally concerned about the valediction – the closing of the letter – as with the content of the letter itself.

CEOs would cross out “Best Wishes,” and ask that it be changed to “Warmest Regards.” Other would cross out “Again, Thank You,” and write instead “Cheers”. It’s clear that people put a lot of thought into what they say on that final line, and it’s an intensely personal decision, even if the end result seems pretty standard.

Typically, I close my notes to close friends and loved ones with silly Xs and Os, to others I say more formally, “Be well,” and in a yoga capacity, I usually say “Namasté“.

Analea’s family and friends circulated this poem shortly after her death. She wrote it about a month after she began chemotherapy earlier this year.

I’m sharing it with you, with the permission of her son and daughter-in-law:

Danced in the Moonlight

No matter when I move out of this life, whether it be tomorrow or 50 years in the future, this is what I want everyone to know:

I have lived.

Fully and richly,

completely and absolutely.

I have lived juicy and followed my dreams,

danced in the moonlight and frolicked in the sunlight.

I regret nothing.

And, most of all, I have been blessed with love,

surrounded by the most wonderful souls in the world:

my children,

my mother,

my siblings,

my family of blood and my family of choice,

my dear true friends.

This life has been one magical blessing after another and I am so grateful,

so eternally grateful for every moment.

I am full and complete and joyful, so joyful.

crazy, free, and whole.

Blessed Be.

– Analea

I’ve been keeping this poem hanging above my desk because I knew I wanted to share this somehow.

And, this morning, I realized what I want to do. In Analea’s memory, I going to begin closing my posts, emails, and letters to friends, with a valediction that combines mine with hers. I’m not doing this because I want to be Analea or fill any part of her role among our friends. I’m going to do it as a tribute. It will be the metaphorical sticker on my car. Each time I write it, I’ll be extending, through my choice of closing, the wish that the recipient live their life without regrets and be, like Analea, full, complete, and joyful, crazy, free, and whole.

I may do this for months, or perhaps years to come. In her memory, I invite you to join me in this.

Namasté & Blessed Be.