Death 101

The course in Death 101 is full enrollment but oddly enough very few people write their midterms. It is not like you can fail Death, but you certainly can do it badly.

Care for me became a career from the moment I saw the decline in a family member.
It was instinctual, and I felt the nudge to upgrade and retrain. Thankfully, my first stop was a Hospice Course where I learned to honour the Spirit of the client. A wonderful Instructor, Helen _____ was the right fit for that job. She pulled together a 3 month course that touched on all aspects of death and dying as pertains to Hospice workers.

My client of the morning is one that I bless Helen for every day, in that the care comes with a dash of insistance on safe practise and a dollop of compassion. I know noone really wants to die. We may wish our lives could be otherwise, we may wish our minds worked in other ways, but none of us truly wishes ourselves dead. At some point in the palliative process that changes. Something makes the standard of living unbearable, and we let go. At least, that is what I perceive to be happening.

Morning woman so beautiful and full of elegance and taste is loosing her battle with breast cancer. She is conducting her dying in the same way as she lived: defiantly and in full control.
The only trouble with this is that control is not possible as you begin the final death process.

Letting her try to do things is my way the middle way, and as she finds her strength lessened, she asks for help immediatly. I find this kinder than insisting to do it MY way. She is a smart woman. She knows the score.

Today I put her back to bed and assured her friends who are the primary care givers that it is not possible for her to live much beyond this week. It is a miracle she is still alive but we are already past her boundary line for personal care and I can see she will find the next chapter intolerable. She will let go.

I pray that God in his mercy sends a special angel to her to bear the tremendous burden of pride she has carried for so long. Once that load is off she too can soar.

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"One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar." ~ Helen Keller ~