One Who Dies Well

Fran at St Edward's Blog points us to a remarkable women she met and to St. Scholastica as well.

Over the months Carol would dip down and come close to death. She would often call me from the hospital to say hello and give me an update. She knew exactly what was happening and I never heard or saw fear in her. She had a rich quality that combined deep and ancient wisdom with a childlike wonder. And Carol had no fear about meeting the God she adored.

It seemed that Carol might never die - a hopeful thought for those who knew her. Yet that was not to be the case. She kept dancing with death, but with a bit of a polka beat, as her Polish heritage dictated. Carol neither rushed towards nor avoided her death in my experience, she was in relationship with her life through her relationship with God and God's people. It is utterly impossible to live well without being able to have some insight that this also means to die well.

Indeed. I'm off to re-read Tuesday's With Morrie once again to remember that point even better. And read more of Fran's post on St. Scholastica as well.

How We Die (part 2)

I was going to write about wakes and funerals today but instead I was moved by NC Sue's response so deeply that I thought I'd give it special attention:

She writes:

I've worked as a nurse for 35+ years, and I've been at the bedside of the dying more times than I can count. I am not afraid of being dead, but after years of experience caring for the living... and the dying... I'm afraid of what I might have to go through between now and then.

There comes a time when it may be appropriate to embrace death - NOT out of depression or desperation, but out of a recognition that our earthly life IS finite, and rightly so.

There are times when the greatest gift we can give to those we love is permission to die in comfort surrounded by those we love. Read my earlier post at http://acts17verse28.blogspot.com/2009/04/janice-and-matt-true-story.html to see what I mean.

"Eternal life" doesn't mean that our current bodies continue forever. It means that our souls continue after the death of our earthly bodies. I pray that the transition I make... and that YOU make... will be gentle and surrounded by love.

For those of you who didn't follow her link in the post above. Here's a brief tease snippet:

Matt was reluctant to talk about it at first, but I think he knew that Janice was dying. We all did. And there were tears shed by all of us, especially on the day that Matt brought their little baby in and laid her on the bed beside a mom she would never know.

After seeing the extent of Janice 's suffering and after numerous heart-breaking conversations with the staff, Matt decided that the time had come for us to remove the breathing tube and to allow Janice the opportunity to die if, indeed, it was her time. I was working with Janice that day.

After the decision was made, I talked with Matt about what to expect. I told him that the ventilator would be turned off, the breathing tube would be removed, and that Janice probably wouldn’t live long after that. I told him that she might have some noisy and irregular breaths and that her color would change. I told him that he could remain in the room if he wished but that I would stay with Janice and be sure she wasn't in pain. Matt decided to stay.

Go read the whole post, get a hanky but also be sure to notice how beautifully this man loved his wife.

A huge h/t to NC Sue over at her fine blog, In Him We Live And Move And Have Our Being

Dying Well

From the NY TImes a few days ago on Sisters of St Joseph caring for their dying members at home rather than hospitals. A great model for us all:

As she lay dying, Sister Dorothy declined most of her 23 medications not essential for her heart condition, prescribed by specialists but winnowed by a geriatrician who knows that elderly people are often overmedicated. She decided against a mammogram to learn the nature of a lump in her one remaining breast, understanding that she would not survive treatment.

There were goodbyes and decisions about giving away her quilting supplies and the jigsaw puzzle collection that inspired the patterns of her one-of-a-kind pieces. She consoled her biological sister, who pleaded with her to do whatever it took to stay alive.

Even as her prognosis gradually improved from hours to weeks and even months, Sister Dorothy’s goal was not immortality; it was getting back to quilting, as she has. She spread her latest on her bed: Autumnal sunflowers. “I’m not afraid of death,” she said. “Even when I was dying, I wasn’t afraid of it. You just get a feeling within yourself at a certain point. You know when to let it be.”

A convent is a world apart, unduplicable. But the Sisters of St. Joseph, a congregation in this Rochester suburb, animate many factors that studies say contribute to successful aging and a gentle death — none of which require this special setting. These include a large social network, intellectual stimulation, continued engagement in life and spiritual beliefs, as well as health care guided by the less-is-more principles of palliative and hospice care — trends that are moving from the fringes to the mainstream.

For the elderly and infirm Roman Catholic sisters here, all of this takes place in a Mother House designed like a secular retirement community for a congregation that is literally dying off, like so many religious orders. On average, one sister dies each month, right here, not in the hospital, because few choose aggressive medical intervention at the end of life, although they are welcome to it if they want.

“We approach our living and our dying in the same way, with discernment,” said Sister Mary Lou Mitchell, the congregation president. “Maybe this is one of the messages we can send to society, by modeling it.”

Primary care for most of the ailing sisters is provided by Dr. Robert C. McCann, a geriatrician at the University of Rochester, who says that through a combination of philosophy and happenstance, “they have better deaths than any I’ve ever seen.”

A great breakdown on Catholicism's take on both Euthanasia and using extraordinary means and the difference between the two. A snip:

Laura L. Carstensen, the director of the Center on Longevity at Stanford University, says the convent setting calms the tendency for public policy discussion about end-of-life treatment “to devolve into a debate about euthanasia or rationing health care based on age.”

“Every time I speak to a group about the need to improve the dying process, somebody raises their hand and says, ‘You’re talking about killing old people,’ ” Dr. Carstensen said. “But nobody would accuse Roman Catholic sisters of that. They could be a beacon in talking about this without it turning into that American black-and-white way of thinking: Either we have to throw everything we’ve got at keeping people alive or leave them on the sidewalk to die.”

Often the Roman Catholic position on end-of-life issues is misconstrued as “do anything and everything necessary” but nothing in Catholic theology demands extraordinary intervention, experts say, nor do the sisters here, or their resident chaplain, Msgr. William H. Shannon, 91, advocate euthanasia or physician-assisted suicide.

“Killing somebody who is very, very old, with a pill or something, that isn’t right,” Sister Dorothy said. “But everybody has their own slant on life and death. It’s legitimate to say no to extraordinary means. And dying people, you can tell when they don’t want to eat or drink. That’s a natural thing.”

Indeed. We need these great women to teach us how to die well. Let us pray today for all those who are dying that they may die with dignity, peace and prayer.

Photo courtesy of James Estrin/The New York Times