The line between …
Every Thursday afternoon, I volunteer at a local hospice. My role is to offer spiritual care within the in-patient unit. Sometimes I hold the weekly remembering service in the sanctuary, reading out the names of all the people who have died under the hospice’s care over the past week, reading a poem or playing a piece of music and holding space for staff to remember. Often, I recognise one or two names of patients I met on the wards the previous week or perhaps if they came in at some point to help control their pain.
Ready or not?
A month or so ago, I met a gentleman who was unhappy with God for what he saw as an injustice. We talked, at least he talked and I asked a few things. After a while he seemed a little lighter.
I’ve mentioned before on these posts, that I run a threshold singing group and once a month, two or three of us go to the hospice to sing at the bedside. The week following my first meeting with this gentleman, we sang for him. He was very poorly and while we sang, he relaxed into sleep. I didn’t expect to see him again, but I have, twice, including yesterday when he told me he had no regrets and was ready to go. Inevitably, one day I will go in and he will be a name on the list.
Personal Epic
I don’t often get to learn much of a person’s life, the journey they have taken that is ending here in this bed, looking onto a beautiful garden, cups of tea in a beaker and no more pleasure in cake. It’s easy to see just an emaciated frame or an illness or a grumpy mood. But, like the line between two dates on a gravestone, there is an epic drama, invisible and untold, for every person lying in their bed. So, as is my way, I began musing: when it’s my turn, what will matter to me? What words could be written in place of that line? What will I know about my life that will comfort me at the end? The following ‘Late Fragment’ by Raymond Carver came to mind:
And did you get what You want from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself Beloved on this earth.
This is what I want to know and, I might add, for it to be reciprocal: for me to know myself a lover of this earth and all that lives here.
What will be said?
As an interfaith minister, I have held many funerals and written, read or listened to many eulogies. The ones I cherish, are the ones that ‘conjure up’ the person, as it were, the funny, sad, loving, quirky, struggling, beautiful, flawed, flesh and blood, human being, whose time on earth has come to an end.
So here’s a question: what is it we would like to be said at our funerals? I can tell you for myself, it won’t be my successes at work or the peak of my outward achievements. What I would like is for someone to be able to say truthfully, that I was kind. I would like it to be true that I was loving. I would like for someone to remember that when they were sorrowing, my heart was a soft and safe place to land. And I hope that for someone, I have held a light of hope which prevented utter darkness from engulfing them.
Make life true
Why am I saying this? Because, if that is what I want to be true at my death, I had better live into it while I have time. The how of it doesn’t matter – writing, holding space, singing, over a cup of tea, with a smile that I’m not even aware mattered to someone. I don’t need to know that I made a difference – though an occasional acknowledgemnt is always beautiful – I need to know that I have been true to my heart. To anchor myself in the love and kindness which, through no credit of my own, are inside me, and let them be expressed in my unique way, this is what I want to be my focus and my joy.
My encouragement to myself and to you, is to muse on that question – when I die, what would I like to be true of my life?- and to see where in our lives now, we are and are not fulfilling our hearts’ wishes. Or to put it in the beautiful question Mary Oliver poses:
Tell me, what is it you plan to do With your one wild and precious life?
Ready
We none of us know when our personal epic will end, or how, but I want to be ready, in the sense that whenever it is, I can say, “Thank you”, because I have fully appreciated living in a human body on this beautiful earth and feel I did the best I could to allow my heart, my soul, to shine out in this physical existence. Whenever that time comes, to have, as the gentleman in bed three says, no regrets and be ready to go.
With my love
Nickie
PS I would welcome hearing your responses so do please write to me if you feel so moved. You can do that here. And my heartfelt thanks to the many of you, who wrote to me after my lost blog, with words of affirmation, love and kindness, letting me know that my words touched you. This is why I write.
NEWS
Prepare your own funeral
I have for many years, assisted people to prepare their own funerals. This is not only good for them but a kindness for those who are left to make arrangements when they are gone. I have always done this in person, one on one, but it occurs to me that there is no reason why it couldn’t be an online connection and why it couldn’t also be a small group. So if you would like me to assist you with this – excuse the cliché – ‘thinking outside of the box’, or perhaps you and a small group of friends would like me to work with you together, then do please get in touch. Read a little more about how I would work with you, here
Walking with Loss, Together This group, which I co-lead with Emma Capper, has begun. Storm Agnes passed West and North of us on our opening afternoon, and we were able to be outside with the trees for at least some of the time. I am always in awe at the generosity and courage I witness in people despite – or maybe because of- their vulnerability; and also humbled by the trust placed in me (and in this case, us) to hold them. Huge appreciation to all who came and to Emma for being such a stalwart beside me.
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Funnily enough I was thinking the last days about how I would like Anu to talk about me after my death and using this as my guide for what kind of mother and human I would like to be. I want to be remembered as enthusiastic, full of life, light hearted, slightly embarrassing, fiercely loyal, with terrible table manners and no glad suffering of fools. But most importantly I want to live my life with an over flow of love (the sort of love which makes me say “ooooooo I looooove yooooou sooooo much!!” many times a day.) and with a quiet private foundation of peace and pleasure in every breath.
As far as I can see, you already live fully according to those guides. Especially the bad table manners! With love from your mother xxxx