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What people talk about before they die
Jan. 28, 2012
Editor's Note: Kerry Egan is
a hospice chaplain in Massachusetts
and the author of "Fumbling: A Pilgrimage Tale of Love, Grief, and
Spiritual Renewal on the Camino de Santiago."
by Kerry Egan, Special to CNN
As a divinity school student,
I had just started working as a student chaplain at a cancer hospital when my
professor asked me about my work. I was 26 years old and still learning what a
chaplain did.
"I talk to the
patients," I told him.
"You talk to patients?
And tell me, what do people who are sick and dying talk to the student chaplain
about?" he asked.
I had never considered the
question before. “Well,” I responded slowly, “Mostly we talk about their
families.”
“Do you talk about God?
“Umm, not usually.”
“Or their religion?”
“Not so much.”
“The meaning of their lives?”
“Sometimes.”
“And prayer? Do you lead them
in prayer? Or ritual?”
“Well,” I hesitated.
“Sometimes. But not usually, not really.”
I felt derision creeping into
the professor's voice. “So you just visit people and talk about their
families?”
“Well, they talk. I mostly
listen.”
“Huh.” He leaned back in his
chair.
A week later, in the middle
of a lecture in this professor's packed class, he started to tell a story about
a student he once met who was a chaplain intern at a hospital.
“And I asked her, 'What
exactly do you do as a chaplain?' And she replied, 'Well, I talk to people
about their families.'” He paused for effect. “And that was this student's
understanding of faith! That was as deep as this person's spiritual life went!
Talking about other people's families!”
The students laughed at the
shallowness of the silly student. The professor was on a roll.
“And I thought to myself,” he
continued, “that if I was ever sick in the hospital, if I was ever dying, that
the last person I would ever want to see is some Harvard Divinity
School student chaplain
wanting to talk to me about my family.”
My body went numb with shame.
At the time I thought that maybe, if I was a better chaplain, I would know how
to talk to people about big spiritual questions. Maybe if dying people met with
a good, experienced chaplain they would talk about God, I thought.
Today, 13 years later, I am a
hospice chaplain. I visit people who are dying – in their homes, in hospitals,
in nursing homes. And if you were to ask me the same question - What do people
who are sick and dying talk about with the chaplain? – I, without hesitation or
uncertainty, would give you the same answer. Mostly, they talk about their
families: about their mothers and fathers, their sons and daughters.
They talk about the love they
felt, and the love they gave. Often they talk about love they did not receive,
or the love they did not know how to offer, the love they withheld, or maybe
never felt for the ones they should have loved unconditionally.
They talk about how they
learned what love is, and what it is not. And sometimes, when they are actively
dying, fluid gurgling in their throats, they reach their hands out to things I
cannot see and they call out to their parents: Mama, Daddy, Mother.
What I did not understand
when I was a student then, and what I would explain to that professor now, is
that people talk to the chaplain about their families because that is how we
talk about God. That is how we talk about the meaning of our lives. That is how
we talk about the big spiritual questions of human existence.
We don't live our lives in
our heads, in theology and theories. We live our lives in our families: the
families we are born into, the families we create, the families we make through
the people we choose as friends.
This is where we create our
lives, this is where we find meaning, this is where our purpose becomes clear.
Family is where we first
experience love and where we first give it. It's probably the first place we've
been hurt by someone we love, and hopefully the place we learn that love can
overcome even the most painful rejection.
This crucible of love is
where we start to ask those big spiritual questions, and ultimately where they
end.
I have seen such expressions
of love: A husband gently washing his wife's face with a cool washcloth,
cupping the back of her bald head in his hand to get to the nape of her neck,
because she is too weak to lift it from the pillow. A daughter spooning pudding
into the mouth of her mother, a woman who has not recognized her for years.
A wife arranging the pillow
under the head of her husband's no-longer-breathing body as she helps the
undertaker lift him onto the waiting stretcher.
We don't learn the meaning of
our lives by discussing it. It's not to be found in books or lecture halls or
even churches or synagogues or mosques. It's discovered through these actions
of love.
If God is love, and we
believe that to be true, then we learn about God when we learn about love. The
first, and usually the last, classroom of love is the family.
Sometimes that love is not
only imperfect, it seems to be missing entirely. Monstrous things can happen in
families. Too often, more often than I want to believe possible, patients tell
me what it feels like when the person you love beats you or rapes you. They
tell me what it feels like to know that you are utterly unwanted by your
parents. They tell me what it feels like to be the target of someone's rage.
They tell me what it feels like to know that you abandoned your children, or
that your drinking destroyed your family, or that you failed to care for those
who needed you.
Even in these cases, I am
amazed at the strength of the human soul. People who did not know love in their
families know that they should have been loved. They somehow know what was
missing, and what they deserved as children and adults.
When the love is imperfect,
or a family is destructive, something else can be learned: forgiveness. The
spiritual work of being human is learning how to love and how to forgive.
We don’t have to use words of
theology to talk about God; people who are close to death almost never do. We
should learn from those who are dying that the best way to teach our children
about God is by loving each other wholly and forgiving each other fully - just
as each of us longs to be loved and forgiven by our mothers and fathers, sons
and daughters.
The opinions expressed in
this commentary are solely those of Kerry Egan.
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