The Gift of Comfort

I can think of nothing harder or more frightening than trying to talk with someone who is dying. If we live long enough there will be those times when a loved one or close friend is facing the end of their lives while we stand paralyzed with fear with no idea about what to say or even if we should say anything at all. Maybe they don’t want to talk about it. Maybe they don’t know they are dying or want to live in denial. What if we say the wrong thing?

The first time I listened to a person tell me about their death I had to hold on to the chair to keep from running from the room. A daughter found my name and asked me to visit her mother in the hospital. I went thinking I would do my normal thing of standing near the door, throwing some scriptures and prayers at the person while telling them they were going to get well. That day the woman said, “I don’t think I am going to make it.” I said, “Do you wish to talk about that?” She said she did, and I grabbed the chair and held on.

Since that encounter one of the things I hold most dear are the several times I have walked with someone as they were facing death and then dying. No other experience is as intimate, as meaningful, as life changing or significant as being a listening ear to a life facing its end. Those experiences have taught me a few things that I hope can encourage others to learn how to help their loved ones avoid the loneliness of dying in silence.

Most of the Time the Person Knows
A dear friend asked his daughters to send for me. They meet me at the front door of the hospital saying, “Don’t you dare tell our father he is dying.” They believed that if someone knew, they would give up and die much sooner. I told them I planned to listen not tell. The first words out of his mouth were, “Doug I am dying, will you help get me into hospice?” That began a long series of sessions with him telling me about how he felt about dying, and how much it hurt not getting to be a part of his grandchildren’s lives, what his hopes were for his family, and how he hoped I would stay close to his daughters and comfort them. We walked together to face that long night.

They Will Chose Someone with Whom They Feel Safe
No one should ever barge in unasked and force themselves on the person. Neither should anyone feel hurt over not being chosen. Folks make the choice for many reasons. If someone is not chosen it may be because they were too close, and the talking would be too emotional and mutually painful. It must be their choice.

We have Nothing to Say Until we Listen
A nursing home asked me to see if I could help calm down a patient who was out of control with anxiety attacks. I had never met the lady and she could not speak because of a throat condition. She wrote on a child’s magic slate that made the words go away when the sheet was raised. We spent the morning trying to get acquainted and then I asked her what she was afraid of. She wrote “Death.” The preacher in me almost took over and started telling her about heaven but I stopped and said, “Are you afraid of death or are you afraid of dying?” She wrote “Dying” in large letters. It gradually became clear she was very afraid of choking to death. I asked if she wanted me to find out how she was going to die, and she shook her head with a look of gratitude on her face. I then asked if I found the answer, did she want to know the truth and she assured me she did.

I almost had to hog tie the doctor to get a straight answer but found out she would choke to death but would be in a coma long before that could happen. After hearing the truth, she was never again in panic and we wore out that magic slate facing her death together.

Truth
I had Mondays with Bob for over a year. Bob was a successful businessman fighting cancer. He was one of the most honest minds I have ever known. The first time we were together he said, “I don’t believe in life after death.” My response was, “Well Bob you don’t but I do, so one of us is going to be surprised and I hope it is you.” We became friends that day.

As Bob grew worse, he told his wife I was the only person he wanted to see, besides her of course. He began begging off when friends called. I asked him why he felt that way and he said, “You are the only one who is honest with me. My friends lie and they know they are lying. They also know I know they are lying but they tell me how much better I look and how I have good color, but when you come and I say I am not doing well, you say that is right and then we can talk.” I asked what it felt like when his friends told him he was getting better? He said, “It feels lonely, like there is no one in this deal with me.”

 I learned another valuable lesson from Bob. Most people don’t necessarily want to know the time of their death, most just want to know what is next, what to expect at the next step in the journey. There seems to be no way to make that clear to caregivers and they seem to think they are being ask how long the person will live, and of course there is no way to answer that. But we can say what changes will happen soon.

 Dying Ritual
We do not handle death well now. There was a time when we allowed what I call dying ritual for the terminally ill. My grandfather developed blood poisoning which was a terminal illness in those days. No one tried to avoid talking about his death, no one thought he would give up and die if he knew he was not going to make it. He had a chance to talk personally with each of his children. The family walked the journey together and learned to grieve openly long before he died.

 Now we isolate folks most of the time in hospital rooms with very limited visiting periods and certainly not a whole family and death becomes a lonely disconnected experience.

 When it became evident my Uncle Joe would not live, the family asked the doctors to tell him, but they did not do so before they left for the weekend. When I arrived on Saturday the family were reluctant to go into the room with him for fear he would ask them, and they could not face having to be the one to tell him. That task fell to me and, even though I had dealt with death for years, my knees where shaking and tears were flowing. When I finished, I suggested he take a few moments to get his thinking together and then I would bring in his family. We gathered around his bed and each of us had the chance to tell him how much we loved him and how much he had meant to us. His older brother, who he had looked up to all of his life, told him he was one of the best people he ever knew and kissed him. What a time. It takes a family to grieve a loss and that time of grieving together began there and Joe got to be part of it. That is dying ritual and it can be done by any family with the courage to listen and speak with loved ones as they are dying.

 We sometimes laugh and say that our company should be called Death R Us, but the chance to walk with some folks as they face the greater fear of their lives, learning how to provide dying ritual, planning funerals that talk about the person and provide healing for the families and then learning how to walk with folks through the journey of grief that follows has been such a blessing that my constant prayer has been “Thank you God for an honor I could never believe I deserved.”