Place Where You Keep Dying Over and Over Again

The Final Hour

Thoughts on Dying and Letting Go

May 2, 2016

Available languages: Español, 한국어

The following commodity is excerpted from Arnold'southward volume Exist Not Afraid: Overcoming the Fright of Death.

Even in his tardily eighties, my father-in-police, Hans, made trips from Connecticut to Europe. A self-taught scholar with a passion for history and religion, he wasn't going to allow historic period make it the style of conferences and tours. If coming together interesting people required flying long distances, so be it. Later all, traveling didn't wearable him out. It rejuvenated him. A family member predicted, "When he dies, he'll die in harness."

On Christmas Eve, 1992, at the age of ninety, Hans was sitting on a hay bale, a shepherd'southward cloak over his shoulders and a wooden staff in his paw, having volunteered to join in an outdoor nascency pageant. Feeling cold, he asked to exist taken indoors, and soon someone was driving him abode, just a stone'south throw away. But Hans never made it. Opening the machine door for him later the ride, his commuter found that he was no longer live.

To lose a friend or family member unexpectedly is always a shock. True, information technology can also be a blessing, if he or she is elderly, and has lived a fulfilled life. Surely most people, if they were allowed to choose, would elect to die as Hans did – happily and quickly. Simply few go that fashion. For most, the end comes gradually.

"I wish a friend had put this cute volume in my hands when my husband died." —Madeleine Fifty'Engle, writer, A Wrinkle in Time

Dying most ever involves a difficult struggle. Part of it is fear, which is often rooted in uncertainty of the unknown and unknowable future. Role of it may be the urge to fulfill unmet obligations or to exist relieved of past regrets or guilt. Just part of it is as well our natural resistance to the thought that everything we know is coming to an terminate. Call it survival instinct, the will to live, or whatever – it is a powerful central force. And except in rare cases (those who die in a heavily medicated country, for instance) it can give a person amazing resilience.

Maureen, an erstwhile friend, fell and broke her hip in her mid-nineties; since then her younger sister has died, then has one of her sons. She herself is bedridden much of the mean solar day, and confined to a wheelchair the residue of the fourth dimension. Still, this "tough old bird" (every bit she calls herself) who likes to stupor visitors by sneaking a prophylactic mouse into their coffee has more than sparkle than many people one-half her age. Having met her previous goal of reaching the year 2000, she ready a new goal of sticking effectually until she turned 100 – a milestone she's simply passed. In resisting one-time age with every fiber of her being, she has literally kept herself alive.

Then there is Esther, the stepdaughter of one of my sisters, who was diagnosed with an aggressive cancer when she was ten. Within days this lively girl who loved to skip rope, play tag, and go horse riding with her father found herself confined to a bed. Before long afterward one of her legs had to be amputated. Esther wept, so pulled herself together and asked for a prosthesis. "I'll be walking by Christmas – only wait and meet," she promised. Afterward she went bullheaded. Again she refused to be cowed, and spoke of continuing to accept pianoforte lessons anyway. Cheerful and plucky, she didn't die of cancer so much as fight it until the end.

With the volition to alive, a person can overcome unbelievable odds. But decease cannot exist forestalled forever, and eventually concrete life must draw to a close. Strangely, our culture resists this truth. In Florida, thousands of the elderly congregate in retirement communities where they dance, date, practice, and sunbathe – and pay exorbitant amounts for facelifts to continue up the advent of perpetual youth. No one would begrudge the aged a hazard to have fun or "live life to the full." But at the same fourth dimension there is something disturbing well-nigh interim like y'all're twenty when y'all're really seventy – as if such a pretense could stave off wrinkles and middle illness, incontinence and memory loss.

In by centuries, warfare, famine, and illness decimated whole towns and cities, and sooner or after every family was touched. Babies routinely died in infancy, and sometimes their mothers were lost with them. As writer Philip Yancey has pointed out, "No one could live as if expiry did non exist." Nowadays, thanks to modern medicine, improved nutrition, public sanitation, and greater life expectancy, death no longer seems such an unavoidable reality. And when we tin can't avoid it, we try to hide it. To quote Yancey once again, "Health clubs are a booming industry, as are nutrition and health food stores. We treat physical health like a religion. Meanwhile nosotros wall off death's blunt reminders – mortuaries, intensive care units, cemeteries."

Past maintaining such taboos, nosotros have largely removed decease from our twenty-four hour period-to-day experience. But there is a flip side: we have also lost the power to accept the end of life when it does finally come up. I exercise not hateful that we should belittle a dying person'south fears by coaxing him to accept death every bit a friend, every bit some experts do. At that place is good reason to view death as an enemy, which is the way the Bible describes it. Like the writer of the Psalms, who begs for God's hand to steady him as he goes through the "valley of the shadow of decease," most people do non look forward to dying, but are apprehensive about information technology. Even my uncle Herman, though he died confidently, struggled to get to that bespeak and admitted his fear that it would be like entering a long, dark tunnel.

"There are many books available past people bereaved of someone they loved, merely this ane has a special strength." —Dame Cicely Saunders, founder of the hospice motility

Much has been written on how to comfort the terminally ill, but it should be remembered that each individual has unique needs and desires. One person will be talkative and nervous, the next quiet and sullen, the next completely distraught. One will exist depressed, another volition try to bargain with God, nevertheless some other will be calm. These are all normal responses, and none of them is right or wrong. After all, dying is a circuitous process and involves the entire tangled spectrum of human emotions – dread, anxiety and burnout; hope and relief. And these feelings bear on not only the dying, just those effectually him likewise.

It is important to consider a dying person's environment. A hospital may be best for recovering from surgery, but information technology is hardly the ideal place to die. For 1 affair, it cannot perhaps match the familiarity and condolement of a home; for another, visiting hours do not allow for the spontaneous coming and going of close friends and family members.

The choice between home and hospital is sometimes excruciatingly difficult. 1 person will discover the environment of a hi-tech intensive care unit of measurement reassuring; for another, the maze of wires and IV lines and the constant bleeping of electronic monitors is then disruptive that information technology prevents sleep. Either way, it is vital to try to discern a dying person's wishes and to communicate them to the attending physician, even if they become confronting our own gut feelings, and even at the risk of being misunderstood. Medical applied science has made smashing advances in recent years, simply beyond a certain point it may prolong dying, instead of extending life. The line betwixt the two is oftentimes very fine.

Naturally, a private setting is no guarantee of a peaceful decease. When adult children who take not lived together for years gather at the home of a dying parent, they just as often clash equally harmonize. And when wills and inheritances are involved, fifty-fifty carefully hidden tensions may explode into the open. All the more it is important that when we enter the room of someone who is near death, nosotros are enlightened of his need for peace, and respect it. It cannot be said strongly enough: a deathbed is no place to bring up old grievances. Nor is it the identify to belatedly press for reconciliation.

Information technology is different if the dying person feels the need to resolve something, or if we can fix something right past offering a uncomplicated amends. According to hospice nurse Maggie Callanan, co-writer of the book Final Gifts, the emotional needs of the dying are often more painful than their concrete ailments, and the failure to address them can leave them so unsettled that they experience unable to die. Remembering a dying Vietnam vet she one time helped, she writes:

Ane day I received an urgent call from the nurse on duty.

"Please get here fast," she said. "Everything seemed to be going okay, just at present Gus is very confused and anxious, and we're losing information technology."

"No, I bet we're finally getting it," I thought to myself. I had wondered how long Gus would be able to keep upward the tough-guy façade. I felt there must exist times he felt frightened – even if he wouldn't talk virtually it, or allow his fear to show.

The scene was chaotic. Gus was crying out in anguish; his spoken language was so disjointed it was hard to make whatsoever sense of it. But in his confused linguistic communication were the words "villages," "babies," "napalm," "burning" – and the tragic words "I did it, I did it!"

Eventually, Gus's caregivers figured out that he wanted to see a chaplain – a request they were happy to meet. Shortly afterward, Gus died, relieved at having been able to unburden himself to a local priest.

Sometimes the distress of the dying is rooted in the worry that no i knows what they are going through –or that they are almost to go. This fearfulness may be present even in people who are surrounded by a large circle of friends or family members. To quote Terminal Gifts in one case more than:

Many dying people are lone, not only because people don't visit, but also because of what happens when people practise visit. Visitors may spend their time with the person wrapped upwardly in idle talk virtually the weather condition, sports, or politics. Perchance because, consciously or unconsciously, it's intended to do so, their chatter keeps the dying person from being able to speak intimately. A dying person's globe shrinks, narrowing to a few important relationships and the progress of his affliction. When dying people aren't allowed to talk about what's happening to them, they become lonely, even amid loving, concerned people. They may feel isolated and abased, and in turn become resentful and angry.

"I have read many books well-nigh dying, just this is the i I would give to someone approaching death or facing bereavement. From start to finish information technology shines with hope. I want a re-create beside my bed when my fourth dimension comes." —Paul Brand, One thousand.D., author, Pain: The Gift Nobody Wants

Small talk and sense of humour accept a identify alongside prayers, of course; there is nothing more oppressive than unnatural holiness. But far more than significant than words are simple deeds of love: a material offered to cool a burning forehead, a paw reached out to steady a shaking shoulder, ointment to moisten dry lips. Though modest, such acts of kindness are all most people want or need at the end. Helen Prejean, a nun who has accompanied prison inmates to their deaths, notes that even when at that place is nothing you can exercise, you can withal ensure that at to the lowest degree one face he sees as he goes volition exist comforting him with optics of love.

Unfortunately, the dying often have their last breaths lone. Sometimes a person appears to be slipping away, just hangs on for weeks or months. In other cases, a person may seem to be on the mend, only to surprise anybody by dying of a sudden. Interestingly, hospice workers accept found that when a person is worried that his decease might distress loved ones, he may try to spare them by waiting until he is alone, and just then animate his last.

On the mean solar day that Rob, a friend, died a few years ago, he called his married woman and children to his room, told them each how much he loved them, and wished them well for the time to come. Hours later he was gone. Brad, some other friend, was unable to say goodbye. When he cruel sick, his children (all adults) traveled long distances to come across him i more fourth dimension. I of them e'er remained at his bedside, ready to call the others at a moment's notice. When the stop came, however, it came so quickly that well-nigh of his children were non in the house. All were deeply disappointed, and some even felt guilty.

In trying to help this family through their grief, I reassured them that whether or not we are in that location, no one is truly alone at the 60 minutes of death. On the reverse, I believe that the dying are e'er in God'southward hands.

Recalling the last night he spent with a patient who died of cancer, a dr. I know wrote in his journal:

Although intermittently confused, Mark fabricated several lucid comments betwixt labored breaths. At i betoken he said something almost "going" somewhere, and I replied, "Yes, yous can go, Jesus volition have you!"

"Just it's so hard!" he responded.

I said, "Don't cling to us. Cling to God!"

"I'm trying," he said, "but I don't know what to do next. It'due south and so unfamiliar!"

"Aye, but y'all are going before us," his mother said. "And so you can tell us how to get there."

Later Mark asked his father to read something from the Bible, which he did. Just as he was finishing Romans 8, Marker said, "Maybe Jesus will come!" Several of united states responded, "He volition come!"

Later he said quite loudly, "Can't await much longer!"

Over the next half 60 minutes, Marking's animate became more labored, though every few minutes he would say something. Sometimes it was just one word; sometimes a whole sentence, but hurriedly spoken between gasps, and hard to understand. His eyes were open up, but he didn't seem to see us any more than: "This is a great struggle…You don't know how tired I am! Pathetic…Don't focus on…but on the spiritual." And afterwards: "Gotta go…Jesus…Amazing! Very existent…"

After a pause, he added "I feel real bad, but I tin't practice anything about it now." We assured him that whatever he regretted, he was forgiven; that God would take him; and that it would be very soon. Mark then asked for water, and said, "Gonna go very shortly…One of my best days…"

About an hr and a half later, he took his last breath.

As Mark's story shows, dying is a mystery earlier which we can do little but stand in awe. If someone is fighting for life, nosotros can uphold him and fight with him; if he seems ready to die, we tin assure him that we empathize, and release him. Beyond that, nonetheless, we must get out of the fashion. I say this because ultimately, cipher is so crucial at the bed of a dying person than an temper of peace. And as long every bit we focus on ourselves and our attempts to ease his pain, we risk disrupting and distracting him, and preventing him from finding this peace.

When life draws to a close, everything – no affair how important information technology once seemed to be – falls away. And when it is gone, nothing matters but the country of the soul. We cannot look into a person'southward heart; nor is it our place to worry most how he stands before God. But in opening our eyes and ears to what he is going through, nosotros can share his suffering by letting it become ours, and we can pray that he finds mercy and grace. Finally, nosotros must allow the dying go, trusting, as Henri Nouwen puts it, "that death does not accept the concluding discussion. We tin look at them…and give them hope; we can hold their bodies in our arms. And we can trust that mightier artillery than ours will receive them and give them the peace and joy they desire."

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Source: https://www.plough.com/en/topics/life/grieving/the-last-hour-thoughts-on-dying-and-letting-go

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