Living with Dying

I want to talk about how we manage to live with death, dying and grief.

A hospice patient I've been visiting passed away the other day. His primary caregiver is his daughter. They had a deeply loving relationship and she was distraught when I arrived. My role as a chaplain is to listen, so I listened as she told me about her father. He had been a carpenter and builder of homes. He had also worked as a cowboy. Ranching is still a business here in Hawaii, complete with cowboys on horseback.

During a few of my earlier visits, the patient was able to talk. He had the biggest smile and heart you could imagine, and was in great physical shape too from all those years of hard work. He was 88 but didnʻt look a day over 65. He loved to laugh and tell stories.

The morning he passed away, his daughter told me stories about her life growing up and the things he taught her. She said her father had wanted a boy, so he taught her all the things you might expect a home builder to teach their son. There was no shortage of tears while she spoke. I gave her a hug when the tears really started to flow.

People often wonder how I can accompany others in these moments of deep grief and sadness. The longer we live, the more we lose those we love. This is a universal experience. The ones we lose might be a family member, close personal friend, lover, animal friend, or even some important figure that we donʻt actually know personally.

As a young boy I loved to play baseball and Willie Mays was my hero. All the boys my age loved Willie Mays. Weʻd come up to the plate and try to swing the bat the way he did. It was hero worship. He passed away not long ago, and though I never met him, I felt sadness and loss for this hero of mine. I've had similar reactions to certain musicians I've felt deeply moved by. There was one jazz vocalist I followed for years, who did more than just sing a song well. She told you a story and it felt real. She was special and I remember actually shedding tears at her passing. The loss of my old trumpet teacher and dear friend was particularly hard for me.

There is no magic cure for sadness and pain that comes from grief. Time does not heal all wounds, but we do learn to cope. In spite of the suffering I've experienced from loss, the sun goes down at night and comes up in the morning. It happens every day. I go on living and carry my grief with me.

We like to think we are rational and can manage our emotions. Memory is a thing of emotion, not a written record of an event. We store our experiences as emotional impressions, not data. I know for myself that certain pieces of music have gotten tied to emotions and experiences from my past. Hearing that music brings me back to those moments. We are really emotional beings trying to act rationally.

In my previous blog, I wrote about accepting the nature of things. There are times when natural things contradict each other. It is the nature of all living things to want to go on living, but it is also the nature of things that everything has an end point. It is nature that all living things will die. How can we reconcile both the desire to continue life and the reality that it ends? Even more, how do we accept that our own life ends?

The easy answer is to blow it off saying that this is the nature of things and that all we have to do is just accept what is natural. At one level, this is rational because it is inevitable, but it is also irrational because it is the nature of being alive that we want to survive.

One thing I notice about hospice patients is that some accept death simply because they hurt too much and are just too tired to go on. On the other hand, one patient was making plans for the future right up to the end. As was said at the memorial, they rode that motorcycle until the wheels came off.

All of the hospice patients that I visit with are being cared for at home. For those who pass away at home, their primary caregiver is typically a family member. Few of us have been trained on how to care for someone at end-of-life, let alone support others also in grief, so it is often hospice workers who bring a sense of control to a circumstance that is very much out of control. More than just patient care, hospice workers also provide solace for the family and primary caregivers for those in hospice.

Hospice workers daily face the reality of death. Just because their patients are not personal family members or friends doesn't mean they don't feel a sense of loss when their patients pass. Their job is to bring comfort and pain relief to those at end-of-life. I don't see how anyone can do this work properly if they are not compassionate.

Self-care is an important part of the training for hospice and social workers. Everyone is different, so the methods for stress-relief are individual. Some make a point of spending time in nature, doing meditation, breathing exercises or even just listening to music. The intent is to take themselves to an emotionally safe place and to do this as part of their regular routine. It is a daily vacation that one can do for free, with the only price being the time that is set aside for it. This is an important practice that anyone would benefit from.

It takes strength and courage to face our grief. We get that strength and courage from the love and compassion that others bring to us. This is why our circle of family and friends is so important. Grief is just a deeper and more tender expression of the love that is felt for the one that has been lost. Grief and love are two sides of the same coin, and who wants to give up love?

When I talk to someone who is grieving, I don't like to say, “I'm sorry for your loss.” When I hear those words, what I'm hearing is someone saying that they recognize the pain and suffering of loss and don't know how to deal with it. Compassion has them wanting to relieve the sadness in front of them and they don't know what to do. Some hope to end the suffering of grief by saying the right thing, but they don't know what that is. The truth is that there is no right thing to say to someone grieving.

Instead of saying “I'm sorry for your loss,” ask them to tell you about the loved one they are losing. The thing that people need is to know that others respect and allow their feelings of grief. Many need to tell others how much they cared for the person they are losing and what that person meant to them. What people in grief need is to be allowed to grieve, and when they are ready, to be held and reminded that they are loved as well.

There is an undeniable Living Spirit that connects us to each other. It connects us just as deeply to our animal friends as well. Because we humans live longer than most animal companions, we get to know deep loss again and again. I encourage you to allow others to live in their grief for as long as they feel the need to, even though it may feel uncomfortable to you. This is what it is to live with compassion. This is how we live with loss, grief and facing end-of-life.

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I feel that spirituality has to help us in our daily lives, otherwise it’s just so much window dressing and posturing. It should be applied to the most difficult subjects.

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