In my monastic community, we take turns keeping vigil with a brother as he approaches death. We sign up for a time so that he has someone around the clock. The first time I was in the room though, was for the death of my own (biological) father. I can sympathize with the author of the piece, but fortunately I did have someone who could prepare me. A brother of my community had also lost his father in a way similar to me, and he gave me good counsel, including some practical advice. And for the week my father was on hospice, he and other brothers were available via a phone call. And of course there were continual assurance of prayers. I have noticed since my experience with my father, an unnatural (supernatural?) confidence heading into the rooms of dying brothers. And I have even had a couple opportunities to listen to my younger brothers process their own experiences of being with the dying. And other times the flashbacks make it harder for me to be there, and I get to depend on my brothers to pick up where I cannot go. It’s different because we’re all adults, but it’s similar in that we are treating being with the dying as part of our common life that we are formed to live. Check out the scene of Benedict’s death in Gregory’s Dialogues for where we draw inspiration from for our monastic practice of vigil.
I am so lucky I started my professional career in healthcare. I worked as a certified nursing assistant (CNA) after high school, on college breaks, while earning my nursing degree. So, I started my adult life in contact with aging, physical & cognitive decline, & death. I spent time at the bedside of dying people I didn't know personally -- which I know realize in hindsight is excellent life experience both because I have real, hands-on, sensory experience of the dying process and b/c it's probably easier when the dying person is not someone you have a close personal connection with. My parents are both still alive (at ages 88 & 89) & I'm really glad I have experience with death & dying, that their deaths won't be the first time I've seen or heard death.
Yes, just like with birth it seems so helpful to have some sense of the range of what is possible and have space to reflect on it before it is happening so immediately and intimately to you!
I was at my grandmother's deathbed at age 24, although it at that time it was not completely clear that it would be her final illness, as she went from no known health issues to dying in the span of less than two weeks. Due to some other family circumstances I spent a few days being primarily responsible for coordinating my grandfather's visits to the hospital, which was really one of the toughest parts. He became very confused and accusing hospital staff of mistreating her and falsifying records. It was so frustrating seeing both his deep tenderness for her and feeling of responsibility for her alongside his diminishing grasp on the facts of her care, which devolved to the point of making the situation much harder than it really had to be. It definitely left me with a sense of how important it is to cultivate trust in the younger generation and eventually internalize when they take your place as the most capable members of the family.
I was brought to my great grandma's funeral as a small child, and still remember it. My dad gave a beautiful tribute, and it was lovely to be brought into her celebration of life and also to witness the grief in that space.
When my son was barely 3 we brought him to see his great grandfather in hospice many many times. He and my grandfather both loved the cuddles and the joy. It was not a sad space but a beautiful one overlooking farm fields, bright and sunny with old hymns playing on a loop. He also spent most of the funeral in the children's playspace at the church, but it was a mostly joyful space.
I also was with both my mother's parents during their final hours (though not the moment of death).
I forget where I read this, and I'm sure many people have written variations, but the idea of death as a struggle like birth is a struggle is very compelling to me. Both are difficult transitions, physical and messy and wrenching and hard.
>the idea of death as a struggle like birth is a struggle is very compelling to me. Both are difficult transitions, physical and messy and wrenching and hard.
Yes. I was there for my grandmother’s death of breast cancer when I was 12 or 13. It was a beautiful, peaceful death: surrounded by her entire extended family she gently slipped away in her own bed at home. It was a model for what a good death looks like, and is something I hope and pray for myself.
Thank you for sharing this article. This is a topic that I am constantly mulling over!
When I first started working as a nurse twelve years ago in my early twenties, I remember feeling utterly betrayed by my romanticized notion of health and healing, life and death. Even going through nursing school, my bubble was not burst until I began working at the bedside, and found myself facing death with my patients, and straining to make a hospitable end for them and their families. At 23 I was coaching and comforting people much older than me through the death of a loved one, feeling oftentimes like *I* was the only adult in the room.
I have dealt with a lot of anger towards the educational institutions and the veins of Christian thought I was raised in that left me so unprepared to deal with death when it was so unavoidable, but more than that I have struggled with anger that death is something so inevitable and so precious that is siloed away from the rest of life. I have found it incredibly difficult to know how to communicate my disorientation and disillusionment with the popular modern fiction of ignoring death because death and dying simply are not topics that come up without some effort, and the way I think about it now is layered with such visceral, embodied experiences that many could not conceive of.
Talking about death comes with the uncomfortable cost of facing mortality, but NOT talking about it comes with such a greater cost. I cannot count the number of times I have wished that my patients had actually prepared themselves to die one day, that I have wished that doctors suggested ending life-saving interventions in order to guide a dying person towards the inevitable with their dignity and humanity honored and cherished. Although modern medicine has many gifts to offer, every single one of them comes with a cost. The one-sided legacy of evading death that is being passed down with each piece of technology stunts our ability to grapple with hard things, and also our ability to really, fully live. Wisdom comes in not just knowing what can prolong life, but also in knowing our limits, and guiding others to know theirs when it is our place to walk with them.
Thank you for this. I think it serves people so badly to treat the work they *must* do (die) as though it is not something that takes a lifetime of prep.
I've never sat with a dying person. When my mother-in-law was dying my priority was trying to get my husband there. We had children who were struggling with undiagnosed anxiety and autism and going as a whole family just didn't seem possible. Two of our older kids were able to go and they both cherished getting to say goodbye to her. I am very sad I wasn't able to visit. My sister has sat with several dying friends and with our uncle when he was dying. Is it a bit strange to say I envy her that experience in a way? I wanted to be there. I just lived to far away and had children to care for.
I've gone to many funerals. I'm sure as a small child I was taken to my grandfathers' funerals-- they both died when I was little. But I don't remember those.
I was going to say the first funeral I remember attending was my grandmother's when I was in college. That was certainly the first time I'd seen a dead person.
But actually the first funeral I remember was when I was in high school. One of my middle school classmates and her sister and two friends were murdered at the yogurt shop they worked at. Even though we hadn't been close and I hadn't seen her in a couple of years, I went to the funeral. It felt weird to be there but kind of necessary in a way I couldn't explain at the time.
My kids have been to many more funerals that I remember going to as a child. My brother in law's father died and I took the kids when they were very small. Our former pastor who married us and baptized our first three kids. My husband's aunt. His dad's second wife. Then his father and then his mother. I'm glad they've had been to funerals of people they didn't know well before they went to the funerals of their grandparents who they knew and loved. I think the Mass and funeral and memorial services and the graveside service are all very beautiful. And I think it's good that kids should get to walk through those kinds of ceremonies of grief and mourning and learn how to say goodbye before they have to say the really hard goodbyes. Then they know what to expect and it's not all new and strange and scary.
> I think it's good that kids should get to walk through those kinds of ceremonies of grief and mourning and learn how to say goodbye before they have to say the really hard goodbyes. Then they know what to expect and it's not all new and strange and scary.
I think living in a more closely knit neighborhood means our kids will have this chance more than I did.
I witnessed my grandmother and my mom after their deaths, but they died before I could sit in vigil with them. Otherwise, I sat with two or three people as a hospice volunteer. They died after my shift. If people really feel the need to learn more about death and dying and feel unprepared for when they might have to cope with the death of their elders, they should become a hospice volunteer.
When I was 15 my grandfather passed suddenly from a heart attack. I watched my younger siblings while my parents rushed to their house, but he had died by the time they arrived. I said yes when they asked if I wanted to come to the house to see his body and be with the family before the coroner arrived. I recall it as one of the most beautiful moments of my life. It had the same feeling as being at my sister's birth, where the veil between life and death was thin. He was an extremely community-oriented man, and within 30 minutes of his death, the house was filled with neighbors, aunts, uncles, best friends, our pastor - the body still there. I watched my grandmother and mother say goodbye to their husband of 45 years and dad. I remember how strange it felt that there was a tangible sense of joy as people began to share stories about him, make jokes he would have loved, and expressed how happy they were that he was finally with the Jesus he'd spend his whole life serving. I was able to watch how my mom and grandmother survived and grieved from the moment it happened, and I learned from seeing how others immediately began to support a family after death - the feast that silently arrived within hours to feed visitors, the friends who, unprompted, brought what they needed to spent the night with my grandmother, the circle of silent grief as we all just sat for hours after it happened.
I was there for my maternal grandmother's passing and what commonly happens when people are dying did happen: it took much longer than we thought it would, she got better (awake, alert, making sounds) before it suddenly took a turn for the worse, and she only passed once we left the room and gave her some "privacy" (seriously, it genuinely is a thing that many people only die when they aren't in a room full of people). As a Catholic, I am immensely grateful for the Last Rites. It was so incredibly helpful, peaceful, and beautiful, as well as heartbreaking. For my paternal grandmother's passing, I was on my way there (knowing it would be very soon) with my dad and sister; we were about 15 min late, which made me very sad. It's hard being present for the actual passing of a loved one, but when it's peaceful and not terribly sudden (maternal grandmother was 88 and paternal grandmother was 92). I'd very much like to be present for it then not present. But it was much worse for my maternal and paternal grandfathers. My maternal grandfather died of COVID in a nursing home alone in 2021. No one was allowed to be by his side. My dad had screen control of my grandpa's laptop, so everyone watched him pass away through Zoom; his nurses didnt know we were watching. We watched as they denied him water, a shower, etc. It was terrible. My paternal grandfather died before I was born in a car accident as he had a heart attack. Even worse. Again, I know it's hard to watch a loved one die in a hospital bed, but man, I'd much rather be there when it happens than not.
I'm so sorry for what happened to your grandfather. Some of the covid mistakes were made in good faith early on, but even the ones meant well wounded people deeply.
I sat vigil with both of my grandfathers in 2014, and it was brutal. I had a strike of panic every time I got a phone call from my parents for years later, worried that someone else was dead or dying. I’m glad I was there, but the dread I felt when my second grandfather started to decline just nine months after the first was real challenging for me at 18. I missed the bedside of both my grandmothers (although not for lack of trying) and felt a bittersweet sort of peace/relief about it. My folks are still fairly young, but we live next door to my husbands grandparents, who are 85 and 90, and I hope that I can coach/guide/accompany my children well when the time comes.
No. I attended my grandmother's funeral Mass when I was about 10 years old, but we had no relationship with her, so it was very strange. My only other interaction with death was with my father. I wasn't actually there when he died, but he was deeply ill and dying from lung cancer over the course of that whole year following diagnosis. He kept alternating brushes with brutal chemo, remission, pneumonia, aggressive metastases in his brain and kidneys, pneumonia. He never was put on hospice care; he probably should have been since he was a very late stage diagnosis. I was a freshman and sophomore in college. There was so much cognitive dissonance between life at college, the life I knew he had wanted to live, and this wholly unprepared for and ugly death. He died at home of a heart attack in the middle of the night during December. I was the only one who wasn't there with him; it was finals week. My mother knew it might be coming but did not tell me, I think because she hoped he would make it long enough for me to finish my final exams (he did not, I did not lol). My younger siblings were scarred. Nothing had prepared any of us for it. I think I will be grappling with his long death my whole life, trying to learn to forgive, accept that it happened the way it did, how to relinquish all of it - all of it - to God.
My father died from caught-too-late stomach cancer when I was in my late twenties and newly married. I lived across the country at the time but still am extremely grateful for the opportunities to make a few trips in the final weeks to share the burden of home hospice with my mom & siblings. Modern employment policies tend to have more provisions for the actual grieving rituals, but not end-of-life care, because I think it’s easier for large organizations to make rules for the more cut & dry aspects of death. More will require dealing with the messiness of it all, including afterwards when so many are plagued by the administrative headaches of resolving property and financial issues of the deceased.
I attended many funerals as a child, but hadn’t really sat with a dying person before as we lived far away from my grandparents. There was such a beautiful tenderness to how the hospice nurses educated us about the dying process…it was a bit like childbirth in that way, only quieter. And not at all traumatic. Cemetery pilgrimages were also a frequent feature of my childhood road trips. I’ve visited cemeteries (and sick/injured people in hospitals) frequently with my own children but they haven’t yet had opportunities to attend funerals. My dad was the first of his siblings to pass, but their health situations are all starting to get more delicate, so I’m mentally preparing for a lot of funerals in the next 5-10 years.
> Modern employment policies tend to have more provisions for the actual grieving rituals, but not end-of-life care, because I think it’s easier for large organizations to make rules for the more cut & dry aspects of death.
This is an excellent point! I know there's a LOT of work (logistically, aside from emotionally) after death, but it's clearly most urgent to get there *before.*
I'm grateful my husband's school let him prioritize a flight to CA when his grandfather entered hospice. (He's still alive, about eight months later, but it was impossible to know)
I was there with my grandfather while he was in hospice his last two weeks of life, along with my grandmother , dad, and aunts and uncles. I felt it was a privilege to be there with him, and I was with him in one of his last lucid moments. I was glad to have been there for him, but also for the support of the rest of my family keeping vigil together.
I'm grateful that in that time, there's so much to do that *everyone* has a way to serve. I did a lot less for my dad in hospice than I would have liked. I lived a multihour train ride away and had a 1.5yo and one on the way. But I was able to take tasks off my mother's and brother's plates (I did all the browbeating of doctors, hospice workers, etc to head off an unsafe discharge plan until they'd actually *delivered* the hospice bed to my mom's house).
I grew up in a large extended Catholic family with my mom’s 13 siblings and my dad’s 10 siblings. I have many cousins. We were a pretty cohesive family and our social life revolved around gatherings of baptisms, First Holy Communions, birthdays and funerals. The most impactful funeral for me was when I was about 12 and my three cousins were killed in a car train accident. It was the day after Christmas. My cousin, Noel, had just celebrated her 19 th birthday on Christmas and her sisters were 8 and 10. To see three coffins laid out with the cousins I had grown up with was something you don’t forget and it gives a lasting impression that life is precious. But what was most important is the example of my aunt who in addition to her three daughters had already buried a 6 yr old son who drowned and in later years another son killed by a drunk driver. She was not bitter. She continued to live her faith and never blamed God. I can only imagine the welcome she received upon her death as 5 of her children were there to walk her to her heavenly home.
Thank you for highlighting Megan's article and bringing our culture's death illiteracy, yes even within the church, to light. The first person I accompanied through decline, dying and death was a dear friend older than me by 45 years. The day I paid a visit to her apartment in 2017 and realized the big shift was upon us (a year and a half out from the end) I knew I had no idea what to do or expect physically, emotionally or logistically. I couldn't believe I was a middle-aged church-going mother of three and had no idea how this part of life worked. It felt all wrong. Long story short, and perhaps more for another day, I became an end-of-life doula—working with private clients as well as pro bono with the unhoused here in NYC. I also provide death literacy education for existing communities, mainly churches, in order to help equip them in caring well for their own people, and also be of increasing support to their neighbors. Thank you again for focusing on this incredibly important topic.
In my monastic community, we take turns keeping vigil with a brother as he approaches death. We sign up for a time so that he has someone around the clock. The first time I was in the room though, was for the death of my own (biological) father. I can sympathize with the author of the piece, but fortunately I did have someone who could prepare me. A brother of my community had also lost his father in a way similar to me, and he gave me good counsel, including some practical advice. And for the week my father was on hospice, he and other brothers were available via a phone call. And of course there were continual assurance of prayers. I have noticed since my experience with my father, an unnatural (supernatural?) confidence heading into the rooms of dying brothers. And I have even had a couple opportunities to listen to my younger brothers process their own experiences of being with the dying. And other times the flashbacks make it harder for me to be there, and I get to depend on my brothers to pick up where I cannot go. It’s different because we’re all adults, but it’s similar in that we are treating being with the dying as part of our common life that we are formed to live. Check out the scene of Benedict’s death in Gregory’s Dialogues for where we draw inspiration from for our monastic practice of vigil.
I am so lucky I started my professional career in healthcare. I worked as a certified nursing assistant (CNA) after high school, on college breaks, while earning my nursing degree. So, I started my adult life in contact with aging, physical & cognitive decline, & death. I spent time at the bedside of dying people I didn't know personally -- which I know realize in hindsight is excellent life experience both because I have real, hands-on, sensory experience of the dying process and b/c it's probably easier when the dying person is not someone you have a close personal connection with. My parents are both still alive (at ages 88 & 89) & I'm really glad I have experience with death & dying, that their deaths won't be the first time I've seen or heard death.
Yes, just like with birth it seems so helpful to have some sense of the range of what is possible and have space to reflect on it before it is happening so immediately and intimately to you!
I was at my grandmother's deathbed at age 24, although it at that time it was not completely clear that it would be her final illness, as she went from no known health issues to dying in the span of less than two weeks. Due to some other family circumstances I spent a few days being primarily responsible for coordinating my grandfather's visits to the hospital, which was really one of the toughest parts. He became very confused and accusing hospital staff of mistreating her and falsifying records. It was so frustrating seeing both his deep tenderness for her and feeling of responsibility for her alongside his diminishing grasp on the facts of her care, which devolved to the point of making the situation much harder than it really had to be. It definitely left me with a sense of how important it is to cultivate trust in the younger generation and eventually internalize when they take your place as the most capable members of the family.
I was brought to my great grandma's funeral as a small child, and still remember it. My dad gave a beautiful tribute, and it was lovely to be brought into her celebration of life and also to witness the grief in that space.
When my son was barely 3 we brought him to see his great grandfather in hospice many many times. He and my grandfather both loved the cuddles and the joy. It was not a sad space but a beautiful one overlooking farm fields, bright and sunny with old hymns playing on a loop. He also spent most of the funeral in the children's playspace at the church, but it was a mostly joyful space.
I also was with both my mother's parents during their final hours (though not the moment of death).
I forget where I read this, and I'm sure many people have written variations, but the idea of death as a struggle like birth is a struggle is very compelling to me. Both are difficult transitions, physical and messy and wrenching and hard.
>the idea of death as a struggle like birth is a struggle is very compelling to me. Both are difficult transitions, physical and messy and wrenching and hard.
Strongly agree!
Yes. I was there for my grandmother’s death of breast cancer when I was 12 or 13. It was a beautiful, peaceful death: surrounded by her entire extended family she gently slipped away in her own bed at home. It was a model for what a good death looks like, and is something I hope and pray for myself.
Thank you for sharing this article. This is a topic that I am constantly mulling over!
When I first started working as a nurse twelve years ago in my early twenties, I remember feeling utterly betrayed by my romanticized notion of health and healing, life and death. Even going through nursing school, my bubble was not burst until I began working at the bedside, and found myself facing death with my patients, and straining to make a hospitable end for them and their families. At 23 I was coaching and comforting people much older than me through the death of a loved one, feeling oftentimes like *I* was the only adult in the room.
I have dealt with a lot of anger towards the educational institutions and the veins of Christian thought I was raised in that left me so unprepared to deal with death when it was so unavoidable, but more than that I have struggled with anger that death is something so inevitable and so precious that is siloed away from the rest of life. I have found it incredibly difficult to know how to communicate my disorientation and disillusionment with the popular modern fiction of ignoring death because death and dying simply are not topics that come up without some effort, and the way I think about it now is layered with such visceral, embodied experiences that many could not conceive of.
Talking about death comes with the uncomfortable cost of facing mortality, but NOT talking about it comes with such a greater cost. I cannot count the number of times I have wished that my patients had actually prepared themselves to die one day, that I have wished that doctors suggested ending life-saving interventions in order to guide a dying person towards the inevitable with their dignity and humanity honored and cherished. Although modern medicine has many gifts to offer, every single one of them comes with a cost. The one-sided legacy of evading death that is being passed down with each piece of technology stunts our ability to grapple with hard things, and also our ability to really, fully live. Wisdom comes in not just knowing what can prolong life, but also in knowing our limits, and guiding others to know theirs when it is our place to walk with them.
Thank you for this. I think it serves people so badly to treat the work they *must* do (die) as though it is not something that takes a lifetime of prep.
I've never sat with a dying person. When my mother-in-law was dying my priority was trying to get my husband there. We had children who were struggling with undiagnosed anxiety and autism and going as a whole family just didn't seem possible. Two of our older kids were able to go and they both cherished getting to say goodbye to her. I am very sad I wasn't able to visit. My sister has sat with several dying friends and with our uncle when he was dying. Is it a bit strange to say I envy her that experience in a way? I wanted to be there. I just lived to far away and had children to care for.
I've gone to many funerals. I'm sure as a small child I was taken to my grandfathers' funerals-- they both died when I was little. But I don't remember those.
I was going to say the first funeral I remember attending was my grandmother's when I was in college. That was certainly the first time I'd seen a dead person.
But actually the first funeral I remember was when I was in high school. One of my middle school classmates and her sister and two friends were murdered at the yogurt shop they worked at. Even though we hadn't been close and I hadn't seen her in a couple of years, I went to the funeral. It felt weird to be there but kind of necessary in a way I couldn't explain at the time.
My kids have been to many more funerals that I remember going to as a child. My brother in law's father died and I took the kids when they were very small. Our former pastor who married us and baptized our first three kids. My husband's aunt. His dad's second wife. Then his father and then his mother. I'm glad they've had been to funerals of people they didn't know well before they went to the funerals of their grandparents who they knew and loved. I think the Mass and funeral and memorial services and the graveside service are all very beautiful. And I think it's good that kids should get to walk through those kinds of ceremonies of grief and mourning and learn how to say goodbye before they have to say the really hard goodbyes. Then they know what to expect and it's not all new and strange and scary.
> I think it's good that kids should get to walk through those kinds of ceremonies of grief and mourning and learn how to say goodbye before they have to say the really hard goodbyes. Then they know what to expect and it's not all new and strange and scary.
I think living in a more closely knit neighborhood means our kids will have this chance more than I did.
I witnessed my grandmother and my mom after their deaths, but they died before I could sit in vigil with them. Otherwise, I sat with two or three people as a hospice volunteer. They died after my shift. If people really feel the need to learn more about death and dying and feel unprepared for when they might have to cope with the death of their elders, they should become a hospice volunteer.
When I was 15 my grandfather passed suddenly from a heart attack. I watched my younger siblings while my parents rushed to their house, but he had died by the time they arrived. I said yes when they asked if I wanted to come to the house to see his body and be with the family before the coroner arrived. I recall it as one of the most beautiful moments of my life. It had the same feeling as being at my sister's birth, where the veil between life and death was thin. He was an extremely community-oriented man, and within 30 minutes of his death, the house was filled with neighbors, aunts, uncles, best friends, our pastor - the body still there. I watched my grandmother and mother say goodbye to their husband of 45 years and dad. I remember how strange it felt that there was a tangible sense of joy as people began to share stories about him, make jokes he would have loved, and expressed how happy they were that he was finally with the Jesus he'd spend his whole life serving. I was able to watch how my mom and grandmother survived and grieved from the moment it happened, and I learned from seeing how others immediately began to support a family after death - the feast that silently arrived within hours to feed visitors, the friends who, unprompted, brought what they needed to spent the night with my grandmother, the circle of silent grief as we all just sat for hours after it happened.
I was there for my maternal grandmother's passing and what commonly happens when people are dying did happen: it took much longer than we thought it would, she got better (awake, alert, making sounds) before it suddenly took a turn for the worse, and she only passed once we left the room and gave her some "privacy" (seriously, it genuinely is a thing that many people only die when they aren't in a room full of people). As a Catholic, I am immensely grateful for the Last Rites. It was so incredibly helpful, peaceful, and beautiful, as well as heartbreaking. For my paternal grandmother's passing, I was on my way there (knowing it would be very soon) with my dad and sister; we were about 15 min late, which made me very sad. It's hard being present for the actual passing of a loved one, but when it's peaceful and not terribly sudden (maternal grandmother was 88 and paternal grandmother was 92). I'd very much like to be present for it then not present. But it was much worse for my maternal and paternal grandfathers. My maternal grandfather died of COVID in a nursing home alone in 2021. No one was allowed to be by his side. My dad had screen control of my grandpa's laptop, so everyone watched him pass away through Zoom; his nurses didnt know we were watching. We watched as they denied him water, a shower, etc. It was terrible. My paternal grandfather died before I was born in a car accident as he had a heart attack. Even worse. Again, I know it's hard to watch a loved one die in a hospital bed, but man, I'd much rather be there when it happens than not.
I'm so sorry for what happened to your grandfather. Some of the covid mistakes were made in good faith early on, but even the ones meant well wounded people deeply.
Also, I have just realized that none of my grandparents were present when their spouse passed away. 💔🥺
I sat vigil with both of my grandfathers in 2014, and it was brutal. I had a strike of panic every time I got a phone call from my parents for years later, worried that someone else was dead or dying. I’m glad I was there, but the dread I felt when my second grandfather started to decline just nine months after the first was real challenging for me at 18. I missed the bedside of both my grandmothers (although not for lack of trying) and felt a bittersweet sort of peace/relief about it. My folks are still fairly young, but we live next door to my husbands grandparents, who are 85 and 90, and I hope that I can coach/guide/accompany my children well when the time comes.
No. I attended my grandmother's funeral Mass when I was about 10 years old, but we had no relationship with her, so it was very strange. My only other interaction with death was with my father. I wasn't actually there when he died, but he was deeply ill and dying from lung cancer over the course of that whole year following diagnosis. He kept alternating brushes with brutal chemo, remission, pneumonia, aggressive metastases in his brain and kidneys, pneumonia. He never was put on hospice care; he probably should have been since he was a very late stage diagnosis. I was a freshman and sophomore in college. There was so much cognitive dissonance between life at college, the life I knew he had wanted to live, and this wholly unprepared for and ugly death. He died at home of a heart attack in the middle of the night during December. I was the only one who wasn't there with him; it was finals week. My mother knew it might be coming but did not tell me, I think because she hoped he would make it long enough for me to finish my final exams (he did not, I did not lol). My younger siblings were scarred. Nothing had prepared any of us for it. I think I will be grappling with his long death my whole life, trying to learn to forgive, accept that it happened the way it did, how to relinquish all of it - all of it - to God.
My father died from caught-too-late stomach cancer when I was in my late twenties and newly married. I lived across the country at the time but still am extremely grateful for the opportunities to make a few trips in the final weeks to share the burden of home hospice with my mom & siblings. Modern employment policies tend to have more provisions for the actual grieving rituals, but not end-of-life care, because I think it’s easier for large organizations to make rules for the more cut & dry aspects of death. More will require dealing with the messiness of it all, including afterwards when so many are plagued by the administrative headaches of resolving property and financial issues of the deceased.
I attended many funerals as a child, but hadn’t really sat with a dying person before as we lived far away from my grandparents. There was such a beautiful tenderness to how the hospice nurses educated us about the dying process…it was a bit like childbirth in that way, only quieter. And not at all traumatic. Cemetery pilgrimages were also a frequent feature of my childhood road trips. I’ve visited cemeteries (and sick/injured people in hospitals) frequently with my own children but they haven’t yet had opportunities to attend funerals. My dad was the first of his siblings to pass, but their health situations are all starting to get more delicate, so I’m mentally preparing for a lot of funerals in the next 5-10 years.
> Modern employment policies tend to have more provisions for the actual grieving rituals, but not end-of-life care, because I think it’s easier for large organizations to make rules for the more cut & dry aspects of death.
This is an excellent point! I know there's a LOT of work (logistically, aside from emotionally) after death, but it's clearly most urgent to get there *before.*
I'm grateful my husband's school let him prioritize a flight to CA when his grandfather entered hospice. (He's still alive, about eight months later, but it was impossible to know)
I was there with my grandfather while he was in hospice his last two weeks of life, along with my grandmother , dad, and aunts and uncles. I felt it was a privilege to be there with him, and I was with him in one of his last lucid moments. I was glad to have been there for him, but also for the support of the rest of my family keeping vigil together.
I'm grateful that in that time, there's so much to do that *everyone* has a way to serve. I did a lot less for my dad in hospice than I would have liked. I lived a multihour train ride away and had a 1.5yo and one on the way. But I was able to take tasks off my mother's and brother's plates (I did all the browbeating of doctors, hospice workers, etc to head off an unsafe discharge plan until they'd actually *delivered* the hospice bed to my mom's house).
I grew up in a large extended Catholic family with my mom’s 13 siblings and my dad’s 10 siblings. I have many cousins. We were a pretty cohesive family and our social life revolved around gatherings of baptisms, First Holy Communions, birthdays and funerals. The most impactful funeral for me was when I was about 12 and my three cousins were killed in a car train accident. It was the day after Christmas. My cousin, Noel, had just celebrated her 19 th birthday on Christmas and her sisters were 8 and 10. To see three coffins laid out with the cousins I had grown up with was something you don’t forget and it gives a lasting impression that life is precious. But what was most important is the example of my aunt who in addition to her three daughters had already buried a 6 yr old son who drowned and in later years another son killed by a drunk driver. She was not bitter. She continued to live her faith and never blamed God. I can only imagine the welcome she received upon her death as 5 of her children were there to walk her to her heavenly home.
Thank you for highlighting Megan's article and bringing our culture's death illiteracy, yes even within the church, to light. The first person I accompanied through decline, dying and death was a dear friend older than me by 45 years. The day I paid a visit to her apartment in 2017 and realized the big shift was upon us (a year and a half out from the end) I knew I had no idea what to do or expect physically, emotionally or logistically. I couldn't believe I was a middle-aged church-going mother of three and had no idea how this part of life worked. It felt all wrong. Long story short, and perhaps more for another day, I became an end-of-life doula—working with private clients as well as pro bono with the unhoused here in NYC. I also provide death literacy education for existing communities, mainly churches, in order to help equip them in caring well for their own people, and also be of increasing support to their neighbors. Thank you again for focusing on this incredibly important topic.
If you'd ever like to do a conversation with me about your work, let me know!
I would love that (and be honored)!
Can you email me at leahlibresco at gmail?