This Saturday, Mary Kirov Zografov returns to Vancouver Island, eight years after she died.
Filmmakers and former Comox residents Andrea and Jim Cribb
are presenting Death By Joy: An Escorted Journey, the documentary film about the last days of Mary’s remarkable journey onward.
Diagnosed with a brain tumour at the age of 55, Mary said no to aggressive medical intervention, choosing instead to embark on a clear-headed quest to find the true meaning of healing. Her momentous and joyful discoveries offer a rare counterpoint
to a medical-treatment-at-any-cost approach to sickness, aging, and dying.
This feature-length documentary weaves a fine balance between the practical (“Yes, I have a golf-ball-sized tumour in my head”) and the mystical (“It’s a bronze river of luminous light”) as it breaks through the gauze of gloom and darkness that many cultures have wrapped around the most natural of human experiences.
“Western society has pushed death and dying away from the family,” relates director Jim Cribb, “placing it in the hands of others, and losing so much in the process. Mary and her family restore for us the human elements so essential to this process.”
The film is being shown at the Old Church Theatre this
Saturday at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are available from Laughing Oyster Bookshop and Blue Heron Books and at the door. More information
about the film can be found at deathbyjoy.com.