What I’ve learned from the dying has come through those living beings who let me accompany them to the threshold. I have been witness to the last breath—that great mystery. The lessons have been many. The dying gave me a gift. My mother’s time in Hospice was by far the most illuminating. I learned these lessons for the living from her.
Lesson I: Surrender—what is and isn’t in my control
I was ready to give my sermon though something in my bones told me I would not be speaking it. I don’t remember the theme—I only remember I had lived almost three weeks in a Hospice Care Center, curled up in a little corner, watching my mother slowly go away, coming out occasionally to voice some concern for me or some wish for herself. Slowly, ever so slowly, she stopped eating and drinking—she let herself surrender to the dying process though it pained her to do it. I know. She told me so.
Lesson II: Giving up appearances and carefully crafted stories about who we are
I learned what was most important to her and to me. I learned that keeping up appearances didn’t make much difference at the end of her life. Why then should it matter to me, her only daughter?
Lesson III. Letting Go in phases
I learned that she would be my mother till she took her last breath though she didn’t speak much that last week. I learned from my best friend, a Unity minister who took a course from Hospice, that the dying often manage to time their death till some momentous passage is over. My mother lingered on after her house was supposed to sell, after Valentine’s Day, after I gave her permission to leave if it was time.
Lesson IV. The Holy and the Great Mystery of Death
I learned that there is something holy, something so sacred about being with someone in the same room when they die or shortly before or after. And I learned that you can’t always be there but that there is still some connection between those we love as they leave this world.
My mother died early in the morning as I lay sleeping in the bed in the same room. I sensed her departure. It was as if there was a hush and a brushing past me. Something I can’t rationally speak about, something I will always remember.
Lesson V. Love Calls Our Name and Death is one of its faces
And I remember going home and taking a nap, tired from the weeks at Hospice, sad, relieved, uncertain. And as I woke from a peaceful nap, I heard a bird call outside our bedroom window. It makes no sense but I knew it was connected to my mother, to all life, to life calling to life, to the tender thread between the living and those whose time on earth is complete. I was never more sure of my love and connection to my mother than that.
Each living being I have accompanied to the threshold of death has taught me something. They have honored me with their presence; they have taught me how love calls our name. They have spoken without words about that which is at the core of my faith—that we are blessed by our time together, that each second of our lives is precious, no matter what it holds. That some part of us endures—it lives on in each of us, the living.
There is a poem that was printed at the end of the Hospice book. I first heard it at a memorial service for one of the members of the church I served prior to coming here. It was read by her Hospice volunteer. It stays with me. No matter what your beliefs about death and dying, may you learn lessons from the dying and from your own experience of moving closer to impermanence and life’s end. I offer this poem to you:
“I stand upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and moves softly out to the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and look at her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sky and sea come down to mingle with one another. Then someone at my side exclaims—“Look, she’s gone!” Gone where? Gone from my sight, that is all. She is just as large in mast and hull as she ever was. Her diminished size lies in me, not her. And at the very moment when someone at my side exclaims, “Look, she’s gone”, there are other eyes eagerly watching her approach, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, “Look, she’s coming!” And that is death.”
Benediction in the Memorial Garden by Rev. Susan Karlson, 10/24/10
Here in this garden,
Life and death comingle.
Lily turf now pronounces
“Here, in this place, beloved,
Are the Ashes of those you love.”
Do you see this beauty?
Can you sense the ties between us
As fresh as the green shoots
And the apples hanging nearby?
We mourn;
But some part of us knows
that they are with us still,
As verdant as the garden green,
The vast azure blue of sky
And the first kiss of frost in the fall.
Be still, and feel this peace.
And be at peace, here among the living
And those we remember today.
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