‘A body is like a cloak you let drop from your shoulders – not even as difficult as a dress you have to unbutton and step out of,’ said Joan Grant to a friend who was dying. Because she could remember having died many times, she spoke with authority when she said that death was not to be feared. Throughout her life she expected to help others make the transition from life to ‘the other side of the river’.
As a child during World War I, Joan had dreams of comforting the newly dead in the trenches of Flanders and later she would make a point of accompanying her friends in what she called an ‘upstairs’ body when they underwent an operation or perilous journey. In Many Lifetimes Joan and her husband Denys Kelsey describe in detail the ways they were able to help their friend Ray and communicate with her after she died of cancer.
Towards the end of Winged Pharaoh, Sekeeta offers a comforting description as her mother’s spirit is released from her earthly body:
‘When my mother died, I prayed to the Gods that I might not shadow her noonday by my sorrow. She left Earth smoothly and quietly as a sailing boat drifts downstream on the cool wind of sunset. It was as if she had lived in a house with closed shutters, and had opened the door upon a garden where dreams were flowering in their glory, for she had walked out into the Light and seen my father waiting for her.’