Death is sweet

“Death is the last station on the road to freedom”. Theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer said those words to his friends when he was taken away to be executed, two weeks before the end of the war. He was part of the plot to kill Hitler. I just finished his biography. 

In a sermon written several years before, he talked about death, bringing a perspective we rarely get to hear about.

“No one has yet believed in God and the Kingdom of God, no one has yet heard of the realm of the resurrected, and not been homesick from that hour, waiting  and looking forward to be released from bodily existence. Whether we are young or old, makes no difference. What are 20, 30 or 50 years in the sight of God? And which of us knows how near he or she may already be to the goal?

Life only really begins when it ends on earth. All that is here is only the prologue before the curtain goes up. That is for young and old to think alike.  What do we are so afraid when we think about death?

Death is only dreadful for those who live in dread and fear of it. Death is not wild and terrible. If only we can be still and hold fast to God’s word, Death is not bitter if we have not become bitter ourselves.

Death is grace, the greatest gift of grace that God gives to people who believe in him. Death is mild. Death is sweet and gentle. It beckons to us with heavenly power if only we realize that it is the gateway to our homeland, the tabernacle of our joy, the everlasting kingdom of peace. How do we know that dying is so dreadful? Who knows rather in our human anguish we are shivering at the most glorious heavenly, blessed event in the world! Death is hell and night and cold if it is not transformed by our faith.  But that is just what is so marvelous. - that we can transform death.” 

Christmas Tree 2012

Over the years, Irvin has gathered an impressive collection of Christmas ornaments. A small army of Christmas Trees would be needed to show them all! This year, because we were both so busy, I came back home one night to find a small tree he put up decorated with ornaments he purchased recently at the cultural center in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

And of course, a few additional ones celebrating our family faithful companions. Merry Christmas to all! 

Dear Sugar and the Sister Ship

Sometimes, I consider some choices in my life, and what my days would look like if, for instance, I had not felt led to go to the US for my fourth year when I was a student at the Faculté Protestante de théologie in Paris, or if, a few years before, I had remained a lawyer at the Bar of Pontoise, or at the Council of Medical doctors of the Val d’Oise area…

The lines written by Dear Sugar went straight to my heart. Sugar (writer Cheryl Strayed) writes an advices column in the online magazine Rumpus. A selection was recently published. Those columns are like no others: luminous words, sharing of intimate experiences often described with provocative language, and ultimately pertinent and wise responses.

Answering to a reader wondering if he was ready to be a father, Sugar mentioned a poem written by Swedish Tomas Tranströmer:  “I think of it every time I consider questions about the irrevocable choices we make… Every life, Tranströmer writes, has a sister ship, one that follows quite another route than the one we ended up taking. We want it to be otherwise, but it cannot be: the people we might have been live a different, phantom life than the people we are.”

Sugar mentioned her own choices and concluded “I will never know, and neither will you, of the life you don’t choose. We’ll only know that whatever that sister life was, it was important, and beautiful, and not ours. It was the ghost ship that did not carry us. There’s nothing to do but salute it from the shore”. 

Apprehension and Holy Spirit

How will that day go? Who will I meet ? Will a patient die? Which one? Will I be up to it? When I drive to the Hospice house, those questions turn in my mind. On the first days, they were like upset bees, fast and restless. After three months, the bees have slowed down. It is winter time; they go from one place to another, chilled and quiet. In other words I am calmer.

Apprehension is still here but only as a feature in the landscape of my mind, not an overwhelming emotion. I cannot foresee the meetings to come, or get ready for difficult question or unexpected situations. Serenity comes with accepting myself and trusting that I will face whatever is on my way – and that I will not be alone.  

In the heavy binder that we received during orientation, I found this before-visit prayer, written by Chaplain Ray Kelleher:

“Something  important is about to happen to me. Somebody important is waiting for me. I am walking onto Holy Ground, stepping into Sacred Space, going to meet, in a vulnerable human being, the beloved of God. I will be receptive. I do not know what words to say, what thoughts to think, or what actions might be necessary, so I trust in the Holy Spirit, who will guide me from the inside. In that mood of confidence I open the door, to offer my truest and best self in the time that I have.”

There is no other way. I notice that I find myself regularly at the right place at the right moment. I see a patient’s loved one in tears in the hallway just when I come up so I am able to suggest we talk in the little chapel. Another day, I sit down with a husband by the patient’s bedside and he suddenly realizes with a scream that she just passed. Later on, he will tell me “Fortunately, I was not alone in the room when she died…”

I recommend a blanket to a patient whose sadness is perceptible. His cancer is spreading and at any time so this older emaciated gentleman can fall and get hurt. He would like to go home. His wife and doctors have a hard time explaining this can’t happen. He is sitting in an armchair in the semidarkness of the room – he refuses to lay down in the bed – and he can’t get warm. He is pleased to receive the blanket which was heated in a special oven. He does not like to talk about his feelings nor religion. I lay the blanket on his laps and put my hands on his – they are so cold. We spend long minutes that way, without talking. He is the beloved of God.