Coming out of the shadows…
“Woa!” I said, “that’s a can of worms!” The journalist from The Guardian had asked me about assisted dying. (On reflection, I could have found a better metaphor!) I declined to say on which side of the fence I sat, or if indeed I sat on it, but I said I thought the issue that needed not to be forgotten, was providing excellent end of life care for everyone, whatever their preference.
Excellent care
I’ve been thinking about it. What does excellent care even mean? For me, it isn’t simply about medical intervention. I am fortunate to work once a week in a hospice. The team do everything in their power to provide care which meets emotional and spiritual needs as well as physical. But still, I can think of Bill, whose wife is literally hanging onto him for dear life as if to keep him from going where she can’t follow. There’s James who always thought there would be a better time to talk to his wife about her wishes, and is bewildered now because she is unconscious and it’s too late. There’s Janet who won’t let her children, grandchildren or friends visit her because of what she looks like.
We don’t talk about death. We hide it away, ignore the fact that death accompanies each one of us from our first breath to our last. This isn’t morbid, this is the reality and for me, it helps me to prioritise what matters: what do I want to do or be within whatever span of years I have left to me?
Solstice
It is Solstice Eve, the time where here in the Northern hemisphere nights are longer than any other nights. Tonight is a new moon. It is dark, very dark, surely a time for introspection, reflection, dreaming, gestating. What are we encouraged to do? Razzmatazz, partying, shopping. Yes, our ancestors celebrated when the sun began returning along the horizon a few days after the Solstice, but I imagine they had rested into the darkness and were ready to begin their return too.
There’s a beautiful poem by Wendell Berry:
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark go dark. Go without sight
and find that the dark too, blooms and sings,
and is travelled by dark feet and dark wings.
I think we are afraid of the dark. We are certainly afraid of not being in control. When I talk to people in the hospice, their anxieties are: how do I get from here to the end; what will my death look like, and what will I look like in it; will I be in pain and, underpinning all of it, I won’t be in control.
Control
We have so many opportunities to practice knowing that we rarely are in control! We don’t control the weather, what other people say, do or think of us, the shape a carrot grows, the way a book ends. What I can have control over is how I respond to things. Grief has taught me many things and one of them is this: I am not even in control of that. I need to follow where grief leads, engage with the process, trust, as John O’Donohue says, “better than you it knows the way”.
I am grateful for modern medicine but one of the problems I see is that it gives us the illusion of control: here’s a symptom and there’s an ‘anti’ to fix it. There isn’t always and that doesn’t mean that death is losing a battle, a failure on the part of medicine or come to that, on the part of the dying person. Simply, there is a time to surrender into death.
I wrote last time about my lovely neighbour who, along with her family, welcomed friends for short visits throughout her dying. We came to her cottage bedroom and watched her gradually withdraw, until one day all that remained was her body, the husk of her, and she had gone. It wasn’t scary. Life went on around her, laughter in the kitchen, comings and goings. Death happened in the midst of life. As she let life go, we let her go. In her dying she prepared those who loved her for their grieving.
Thresholds
Not so long ago this was the norm. Birth happened at home and so did death. Midwives came to tend at the thresholds. Families and communities took care of the practicalities. I’m not eschewing modern medicine – if I’m in pain at the end of my life, I will be begging for it – but what I see we have lost, is our literacy with death. What has filled the vacuum, it seems to me, is fear.
And I have also seen people who do surrender into death. I witnessed my husband over his last months, make peace with his demons and come to realise he was loveable. I am watching now, as one man uses this time to express his gratitude and develop his relationship with what he calls the “Divine indwelling”. I remember a young mother who prepared her family for her departure and then made herself ready for a “long rest”. There are gifts, sacred gifts, which can be opened if we allow ourselves to make peace with death.
I worry that by focusing solely on whether or not assisted dying should become legal, we’ve missed the point: our fear of death itself and of not being in control. Can we bring death out of the shadows and speak its name? Can we make our peace with, practice as often as we can, our lack of control? Can we let Nature, our ‘mother’, the mater/ial from which we are created, guide us through the cycles of our lives and even into death?
With my love
Nickie
PS Thank you so much to the many of you who have written and said how moved they were by the film, Threshold, made by Florence Browne with Guardian funding and featuring the choir I lead and some of my work. I asked Florence why she wanted to make it. Her response was, “I’m afraid of death”. I think I loved her from that moment. Deep respect, Florence. She came with an open mind and an open heart and the film is therefore ‘true’. She did not impose on it questions to be answered or angles to be proven, rather, she explored with sensitivity and integrity.
NEWS
Lots of things on their way in the New Year, not all of them yet pinned down to dates.
Please go to the Events page for my details
MARCH – Writing Pilgrimage, online all month.
Some offerings for Interfaith ministers and students:
For those whose work includes working alongside people who are dying or grieving:
FEBRUARY 2nd and 16th, MARCH 2nd and 16th – online supervision/support sessions
APRIL – 17th – 19th – in person retreat at Poulstone House
And as always, if you would like to talk through anything to do with death, funerals, grief, preparation for any of the above or actually going through it, please be in touch.
Buy Me a Coffee
A huge thank you to those of you who have financially supported my work this year. I recognise that not everyone is able to do so and I am totally committed to keeping this blog free of charge. I very much appreciate your contributions. My writing, the choir I lead and the work I do at the hospice are all unpaid and your generosity warms my heart. Here is the link to Buy me a Coffee.
And finally..
This time of year can be joyful and full of love for some but it can also be charged and challenging for others. Whether you find yourself with family and friends or by yourself, I would like to wish for you a peaceful heart and a knowing that there is always someone holding a candle for you.
