Perhaps We Need Not Suffer So When It's 'Time' for Someone's Death?

I came across this article from the New York times this morning, Murderer in the Mirror, by a cancer surgeon, Scott Eggener. It is troubling to me how much anguish our society - and physicians in particular - have about death. It's as if doctors feel that if someone dies on their shift, "under their knife," or when they are on duty, that somehow it is their responsibility - all their fault.

We see this brilliantly portrayed in the film City of Angels, where Meg Ryan plays the part of a heart surgeon. Her patient dies on the operating table; and Meg becomes furious. However, perhaps there's something greater and more profound playing out here? Perhaps we are to see death, somehow, as a blessing when it comes, despite all our human efforts to stave it off?

Here's what I wrote to Dr. Eggener this morning, because I'd like him to open up to another perspective about death:

Dear Dr. Scott Eggener,

Thanks you very much for the heart-felt article you wrote entitled "Murderer in the Mirror." I very much appreciate hearing from the heart of a surgeon such as yourself. I hear the anguish and sorrow in your voice.

However, I'd also like to share my perspective - as a hospice end-of-life counselor and death educator - that whenever death comes, it has it's place. It does not come by accident; and it is not a fluke. Also, the High (God) Self of a human always gives permission before we die.

I believe that as a culture we have a great deal of work to do to bring death "back into the fold of life"! Recently, I saw a documentary called The Sacred Science. In it, a shaman reflects:

Life without death has no meaning. Life does not exist without death.

Wherever there is life there is death. And we cannot hide from it.

Death is a change, a process. It is necessary for life.

Western societies have demonized death. But why? Due to fear and ignorance.

Because there's something to be afraid of after death. What is it? What is God?

They are truly afraid of God, and God is life itself.

So they stay away from death, and by doing so, they stay away from life as well.

It is my fervent hope and prayer that we can learn to honor death in a new way in our society. It is time to see the beauty, the sacredness, and the divine place that death has in each of our lives. Yes, it is sad and creates a sense of "emptiness" when one of our loved ones die. However, they are on their own Sacred Journey; and when they die, they have completed their work and "job" on earth. Now it is our job, as those remaining on earth, to Let Those Who Have Died Go, as gracefully and thoughtfully as possible, into the Next Realm - where they have their own sacred work and journey to continue. We were Blessed by their Presence with us; and now we must trust that they - as well as we - will continue to be blessed by the New Realm they're in, and the new chapter in life that's opening up to them. 

I welcome you to visit my website, www.changewithcourage.com, for more about my work and mission.

Be well, and Stay Blessed on the Journey, Maria Dancing Heart

ps. I would be delighted if you would like to see my books. I can send you autographed copies if you'd make a donation at either  http://www.changewithcourage.com/Shop, or  http://www.changewithcourage.com/Services (scroll down to donate - $33 will cover the two books, and shipping as well.)

When We Do Not Start the Conversation in Time, Sometimes, There Are Just No Time for Answers:

Tonight I wanted to share from the first edition of my book, The Last Adventure of Life. It's one of the most powerful stories in the book - a poignant article from the American Journal of Nursing that came to my attention thanks to a hospice R.N. The nurse shares in this piece a thought-provoking incident she was a part of when she encountered a dying man on her shift at the hospital. More than anything he needed compassion, and yet she felt she was unable to provide this for him in his last moments of life. She may have provided more than she realized by her very presence, even though the hospital’s protocol left much to be desired. I found myself wondering how things could have been different for this man’s last hours on earth if he, his doctor, and his family had started a conversation about his death much earlier. Then, he might have been able to be on a hospice or palliative program when the following circumstance unfolded.

No Time for Answers: When Clocks and Heartbeats Pause

Mike Soreneson was the second patient on my initial rounds that afternoon: A man in his fifties, youngish but with a tired heart. From the doorway, I could see his distress. It filled me with dread. He was drenched with sweat and his breathing was labored and choked with rattles. Fear was in his eyes. I knew from a report that he’d already suffered two myocardial infarctions, and it was clear that his damaged heart, stretched and weakened from cardiomyopathy, was rebelling against its unrelenting workload.

It took just a nanosecond to sprint from the door to his bedside, apply the blood pressure cuff, and push the call light in frantic summons of the cavalry. Before it arrived, in those seconds that dragged with waiting and the taking of vital signs, he grabbed my wrist and turned his bewildered eyes toward me. Struggling to sit up, he whispered in a voice tight with panic, “Where am I? What’s happening to me?” There was no time for answers as he crossed quickly into the shadows.

Time can stop. It did that afternoon. In that diastole of realization—when clocks and heartbeats pause—I saw him wonder at things beyond my mortal edges. And then, in a finger snap, his eyelids flickered and drooped, and he sighed once before leaving me suddenly alone. Tensions and years eased from his face. He became youthful and handsome, with the promise of life seeming to stretch before him.

As he fell back slowly onto his pillow, the world rushed in: resuscitation, in its chaotic and technical splendor, took control. The room filled abruptly, people crackling with energy arriving together as if from the same train. White coats snapped like battle flags. The code cart, red and bulky, was pushed squealing into the room; a defibrillator and an electrocardiogram machine followed quickly around the corner. A leader barked orders. Sterile packages were ripped open and disemboweled. Mike’s body was stripped and assaulted with needles and tubes. White adhesive tape fringed the room, and us, in little strips, while drops of his blood, imbued with drugs that proffered false hope, rubied sheets and shoes. Paper banners snaked and curled around our feet, documenting the story of a dying heart in unemotional peaks and valleys. Then, straight lines. A life ended.

As the code stopped, I was standing where I started, next to a heart I had compressed and shocked yet never known. The cavalry scattered, as the empty room filled with the smell of defeat. I trembled with adrenaline, yet felt drained. After removing tubes, catheters, tape, and electrodes from Mike’s body, I covered him with a clean sheet and began to clear the debris. Strips of tape had wandered away on the bottoms of shoes to other units, other crises, as this corner of the hospital settled back into familiar routines.

A colleague helped with postmortem care. We talked of the code as if in instant replay, even sharing quiet, guilty church laughs about comedic moments. We didn’t speak about Mike. We didn’t know him. We treated his body with professionalism and respect, but without memories or words of goodbye. I didn’t tell her about his fear. I didn’t mention his last words. They somehow seemed too raw and private, still undigested in my mind.

For weeks after Mike’s death, his impersonal end filled me with sadness and regret. I wish I had comforted him in his final moments—did he recognize my detachment, and feel one final, mortal ache? In the many years that have passed since that afternoon, I’ve made an effort never to shrug away compassion. With every finger-squeeze of thanks, I was enriched. And I hope that when my death is near—before stepping into bright beginnings or overwhelming silence—I will feel a caress on my cooling cheek, or smell the salt of a single tear. Smiling, I will turn from the shadowlands to see someone who loved me, standing in a pool of soft porch light, hand raised in goodbye.                                          --  Pamela Sturtevant, R.N.

There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love, 

the only survival, the only meaning.

— Thornton Wilder

A Powerful and Practical Handbook for Caregivers Struggling to Do the "Right Thing" while Taking Good Care of Themselves

Recently, Carolyn A. Brent of The Caregiver Story interview me on her BlogTalkRadio Show. Here's the link to that interview - which I enjoyed immensely, by the way! I'd received Carolyn's second book called The Caregiver's Companion some time ago, so I decided to write a book review for it. It is very comprehensive and well written; and believe that many of you hardworking caregivers out there will appreciate it. Please take to heart Carolyn's plea that you take GOOD CARE of yourself. I would concur that his is most important!

Here's my review:

Carolyn A. Brent is the perfect author for this book, The Caregiver's Companion: Caring for Your Loved One Medically, Financially and Emotionally While Caring for Yourself, because she was very close to and appreciative of her father, a minister, who she needed to care for as his aging began to take a toll on him. After her father lost his second wife and he had to start going it alone, he began to need Carolyn's help. His needs were serious, so Carolyn had to travel from her home in the Bay Area to assist her father in the Denver area. Eventually, Carolyn convinced her father to move in with her and come to the Bay Area. Some time later, when Carolyn's father's health was in a more critical state, Carolyn had to deal with her siblings, some of whom she had not grown up with. They made life very difficult for her - and her father - toward the very end of her father's life. At a pivotal juncture, Carolyn was not even allowed to visit her father in the private care facility he was living in, and she had to find out about her father's death - after the fact - from a distant relative. This, after acting as her father's caregiver for twelve years, with virtually no help from her siblings.

The point being, Carolyn has had extensive experience working through many complex and complicated issues around caregiving. She is the perfect one to be writing about how important communication and the "crucial conversations" she refers to are, between family members, caregivers, and the loved one facing death. As she writes, "you can never be too prepared." 

I want to mention some of Carolyn's chapter titles here so you can get a feel for the thorough content she offers in her book: "Talk Early, Talk Often," "When Should You Step In?", "Caring for Your Loved one At Home," Moving Your Aging Loved One...", "Emergencies and Life-of-Death Decisions," "Hospice Care," "Crucial Emotional (and Financial) Conversations," How How to Have Crucial Conversations," "Crucial Legal Conversations," and "Taking Care of Yourself." By the way, this last may be the most important chapter in her book?! And Carolyn offers at the very end of her book, "The Caregiver's Cheat Sheet," a comprehensive 14-page list of things that caregivers need to keep in mind, from "empower yourself ... with the right questions when checking out a long-term care facility for your loved one" to "Ask for help and stop having an 'I can do this by myself' attitude."

Needless to say, I highly recommend this beautiful, practical "handbook for caregivers" that many of you current or would-be caregivers around the globe could benefit from. Much of this book is written in a Question & Answer format. Therefore, if you have a burning question, you could simply look for your question in the book and most likely find it. An index has also been provided for the reader's convenience. At the end of each chapter there's even a Question Checklist which summarizes the topics covered in each chapter. 

There are many dedicated caregivers out there working without fanfare or much appreciation. Of the 76 million or so baby boomers in our society, it is likely that a good third of them are caring for a loved one. I read a statistic that said "43.5 million of adult family caregivers care for someone 50+ years of age and 14.9 million care for someone who has Alzheimer's disease or other dementia" (November, 2012 - Family Caregiver Alliance). See this article for more.  Carolyn interviewed 1500 caregivers across the globe as part of her research for this book and for her legal campaign to change the law "to protect the caregiver and the person he or she is caring for." My hope and prayer is that many will find this magnificent, very interesting and unique resource for caregivers that Carolyn has spent a great deal of time and effort putting together! In 2011, Carolyn wrote her first book, Why Wait? The Baby Boomers' Guide to Preparing Emotionally, Financially, and Legally for a Parent's Death.

For those of you interested in exploring further, the link to Carolyn's website is here.

Thank you, Carolyn, for your very fine and thorough work on caregiving. I'm very pleased to be associated with you, and look forward to more conversations with you!

Old Time Religion: Another Reason Americans Are Scared and Awkward around Death?

I was on a date with a gentleman I barely knew this past week and awakened to a new understanding: We were talking about my work around end-of-life and the final transition and the gentleman was letting me know about his hesitancy around speaking about death. He didn't point blank tell me, but I came to the conclusion that he had some fear about where he would go after he dies. And this got me thinking about how the rather puritanical "Old Time Religion" that was often about "fire and brimstone" and hell and damnation - was spawned here in the U.S. and is perhaps part of the reason we Americans are so awkward around death?

Ever since starting hospice work about twenty years ago, I've often wondered why we Americans seem to have such a fear of death. The more I've learned about death – and walked side by side with it - I've come to the conclusion that there is absolutely nothing to fear about it: We are simply “going home” to where we came from when we were born. And rather than a scary experience, death can be a sacred, beautiful experience, a gateway into that which feels like the unknown, but actually when we get there, we will recognize it as the “known,” actually our True and Real Home – where only Unconditional Love exists to bless and heal us.

One of the very plausible reasons I've heard about why we're so fearful of death was through a man who has studied conscious aging for many years. He is Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi (God bless his soul, as he made his final transition last July.); and he points out that the reason we are so awkward around death, and therefore grief, too, is because we've taken it to the hospital in the last 100 years. As soon as I heard this, it rang very true for me.

We've also become a very materialistic culture which honors the “image” and outer material things, more than the inner, spiritual matters. We almost worship youth and therefore tend to - perhaps without intending to - discount age, aging, and the wisdom which comes with life experience, growth, and development.

We are also a culture that tends to be left-brain oriented. We rely on “hard evidence” as opposed to the softer evidence that we know in our hearts to be true that often comes from and is related to our intuition. I have heard that in these changing times, all of us are increasing our ability to intuit things. The love vibration on the planet is increasing; and this is partly why there is so much polarization and strife on the planet today.

In fact, sometimes I say that the entire planet is undergoing a kind of Hospice experience! We are dying to the old so that the New may be welcomed and honored. Even though where we're going is a very exciting and loving place, sometimes it's very challenging to leave the familiar. Although we all know that something new is "dying" to be born on planet earth - no pun intended! - it's difficult to know how to give birth to something we have very little experience with. 

For starters, I believe that this is a time for all of us to move from our judgmental, critical minds, and into our hearts. If we can live and embrace our hearts more fully, we can live in love and allow people to be who and where they are. This is true unconditional love. We do not have to convert or change anything. Just let it be - allow all to be, the way it is. This is the Way of the Goddess, the energy that's coming onto the planet full force today too.

Today, as we on the one hand honor the Old Time Religion that has brought us where we are, I invite us to move into the Heart and as we Open up the Heart and move into it, allow that love to permeate ourselves and our loved ones... then move out into the world and permeate the Entire Planet! What a world we could live in if MANY of us could hold and maintain this Love Vibration Frequency. 

May Peace Prevail on Earth! May our missions be accomplished; we honor the guardian divinities and spirits! Shalom, Blessed Be, and May there be Love, Truth, Beauty, Trust, Harmony, and Peace for all living things, everywhere.   (the Melchizadek's Prayer) 

Yours on the Journey, Maria Dancing Heart~~~

Warning: This writing will be part of my upcoming new book, Deathing as a Peak Experience