Anam Cara

We prefer to avoid talk of death. It is amazing that aside from minimal and superficial reference, the theme of death is absent from most of our conversation. Our culture avoids it too. Where time is money no-one really wants to focus on that edge where time runs out on you. Our education system never really considers it; we have no pedagogy of death. Consequently, death is something we are left to deal with in the isolation of our own life and family. When death visits, there is no cultural webbing to lighten the blow. Death can have a clean strike because the space is clear. Against this background, it is not surprising that we are never told that one of the greatest days’ work we could ever do in the world is to help someone to die.

T

HE

D

EATHBED AS

A

LTAR

Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her,

Alone, shall come fulfilment to our dreams

And our desires.

WALLACE STEVENS, ‘The Deathbed as Altar’

THE IMAGE OF THE DEATHBED FRIGHTENS US. WE END UP THERE because someone we love is departing. But we don’t really know what we should do. As well as being distraught with sadness, we are unsure and awkward. We usually resort to cliché or rush for religious ritual. Yet some people instinctively reach into the heart of the event and extract the treasure.

Over a year ago, a group of students from a university in Ireland went to work in London for the summer. One member of the group, a young American, stayed here to study for autumn exams. One weekend he was visiting relatives in London and phoned his friends to arrange to meet up. But tragedy had just struck the group. The night before, they had been at a party and one of them had tried Ecstasy for the first time. Shortly afterwards, he went into convulsions and was brought to hospital, where he slipped into a coma. The young American went straight to the hospital. All of the group was there with the parents of the young man. A doctor came in and explained that everything possible had been done but the young man was brain dead and he had come to unplug the life-support machine. Everyone was numb and helpless. Just as the doctor was about to unplug the machine, the young American student said: ‘Wait.’ Showing sensitive leadership, he said: ‘This is our friend. Let us take some time before we do this. Let each of us spend a special private moment with him and whisper something special in his ear to bless him on his journey.’ They took the time. Each one blessed him. Then they waited and let the silence settle for the event to become sacred, and for their presence to deepen and become a real circle of shelter around their friend, and only then was he released into his journey.

A deathbed is such a special and sacred place: a deathbed is more like an altar than a bed. It is an altar where the flesh and blood of a life is transformed into eternal spirit. Rather than being unsure, anxious and bungling, we should endeavour to be present there with the most contemplative, priestly grace. Regardless of the shock and pain of our grief, our whole attention should be dedicated to the one who is setting off on their solitary journey. We will have plenty of time later to engage our own grief. Now we need to provide the best shelter, the sweetest love, the most sensitive listening and the most wholesome words for the one who is dying. This is the most significant time, the last moments of time on earth. Therefore, it is vital to attend and listen. Perhaps there are last things a person wishes to say, things from long-forgotten past times he always wished to say but never could. Before the great silence falls, he might desperately need to tell something. And there may be things that need to be heard. Perhaps someone around that deathbed has waited all their life to hear something vitally healing and encouraging and perhaps these are the hours in which it might be heard.

W

HEN

D

EPARTURE

B

ECOMES

T

RANSFORMING

P

RESENCE

Death . . . the undiscover’d country.

SHAKESPEARE, Hamlet

I AM NOT SUGGESTING THAT THE DEATHBED BE CONVERTED INTO a clinical monastic cell. Indeed the situation around a deathbed can often be raw and wholesome with surrealistic splashes of black humour. In and through all of this, however, it is vital to provide an atmosphere whereby the deeper levels of what is happening can emerge and be engaged. A deathbed is not a dead place; it can be a place of intense energy. A woman told me recently that holding her father-in-law in her arms as he slipped into eternity was an incredibly transformative experience for her, more transforming in fact than the birth of her two children. She felt privileged and honoured to be with him at his end.