Tag: Christmas

Two Deaths…

“Grandma, it’s all right. You can go now“

My eldest Swedish Canadian cousin died at home on Christmas Day in 2018. Our families had grown up together in rural SK until she married at 18. The day after their wedding, she and her new husband, along with her entire family, moved to Vancouver Island, BC primarily to deal with her serious health issues, stemming from asthma.

The health challenges would plague her all her life.

She was 83 and her entire family kept vigil with her at her bedside through her final days and hours. She and her husband of 65 yrs. were residents of a senior’s supported living condo in Victoria, B.C.

After struggling with a myriad of health challenges for a prolonged period of years, she finally elected to stop any further treatments earlier in December and was referred to palliative care. Her personal physician continued to journey with her, including spending several hours with her at her home on December 24 – a testament to the quality of the person this patient was and what she meant to her primary healthcare provider.

Early on Christmas morning, waking in her own bed, surrounded by her nine daughters, granddaughters, and great granddaughters, she opened her eyes and asked for her husband. He was called into the bedroom from the adjacent living room, where he and his 6 sons-in-law and grandsons had been spread around the small space slumbering, as best they could.

The 65th Christmas

He leaned across the bed to his wife, and she looked up at him and said, “We’ve had 65 Christmases together.”

She lingered through the day, not fully aware of her surroundings or those with her. In mid-afternoon most of the family adjourned to the daughter’s home, a short way away, where the traditional turkey had been prepared, to share in festive turkey sandwiches.

When they returned, the two granddaughters who were nurses, who had remained behind, called the husband in to see her again. As they left the bedside, he climbed up on the bed beside her and took her into his arms.

He whispered to her, “Grandma, it’s all right. You can go now.”

Within seconds, her breathing stopped, and she quietly slipped into eternity.

A different kind of death

A friend in my Ladies Bible Study shared the experience of a friend of hers who had journeyed with a lady who chose Medical Aid in Dying (MAiD), within about the same time frame as the death of my cousin. Medical Aid in Dying is the term utilized by the Government of Canada in its legislation to avoid use of the terms ‘physician assisted suicide’ and euthanasia. [Any doctor today would tell you that every licensed doctor has been providing ‘medical aid in dying’ since time immemorial.]

The person in question was invited by friend of hers who was terminally ill to be present during the procedure to medically end her life. While the first person was very reluctant to participate because she did not support, nor believe in, the use of physician assisted suicide, because she valued the friendship, and the trust placed in her to be asked to journey with her friend through this end of life experience, she reluctantly agreed to be present for the medical procedure that would terminate the life of her friend.  

The night before the medical appointment to end her life by lethal injection, i.e. proceed with the ‘medical aid in dying’ procedure, the lady who was terminally ill held a family dinner that had the whole family gathered as if in celebration of a very festive occasion. There was great food, good company, laughter, dancing and singing. The patient herself presided at the piano and led the company of children, grandchildren, and close friends in a sing-along into the wee hours of the morning.

Everyone said their good nights and goodbyes as if they were just completing a stellar social occasion.

The next morning, the friend returned to be with the patient who had her appointment with death. She reported that the woman had dressed to the hilt in her best dress outfit, complete with her usual string of pearls.

The patient laid down on her bed in her bedroom, then paused, and asked the Chaplain who was present to say a prayer. She then extended her arm to the medical practitioner in the room, said, “Let’s get this done,” and received the fatal, lethal injections in her extended arm.

The friend of the patient who was a witness to the whole procedure, from the social gathering to her friend taking her last breath, was traumatized. She commented later that, it was “…like putting a dog down.” She vowed she would never participate in a physician-assisted-suicide again and, to this day, still has nightmares around witnessing the procedure.

The Difference

I have shared these scenarios with care workers training for visiting in institutions. They immediately “get” the difference between these two deaths. Do you?

On the 12th Day of Christmas…

Sunday, January 6, 2019

“On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…”

Well, in fact, it doesn’t matter what the ‘true love’ of the writer of those lyrics gave, because something far more substantial is being celebrated on this 12th Day of Christmas which makes that gift pale in comparison.

Today is really the celebration of what the ‘True Love’ of our lives gave to us, to the world. That Babe, born at Bethlehem, and placed in a manger, came as the incarnate God, the ‘Word made flesh’ to dwell among us, to be Emmanuel, God with us. And, as Simeon declares, this ‘True Love’ came as God’s salvation, both for the ‘glory of Israel’ and, simultaneously, as a ‘light to the nations,’ God’s light not only to the Jews, but to the whole world, the Gentiles, the pagans who did not know the revelation of ‘One true God’ as the Jews did.

Today, this 12th Day, we commemorate the arrival of the Magi, wise men from the east, representing the ‘nations,’ the Gentile world beyond the Jewish sphere, to witness that the Living God was including them in the salvation he had prepared for all peoples. They came bearing gifts – rich gifts for a babe born to peasant, Jewish parents – gold, frankincense and myrrh, representative of kingship, deity and death – a harbinger that this King’s reign was not confined to an earthly kingdom, that he was true God and true man, and that he would suffer and die for the world he had deigned to enter as a helpless infant.

As we consider these representatives of the nations, these wise men who also represent us, kneeling to offer gifts to this heavenly King, we, too, are called to consider what we, ourselves, might offer to this royal deity. At today’s Mass, our priest encouraged us to bring the ‘gold’ of our love, the ‘frankincense’ of our prayers, and the ‘myrrh’ of our own sufferings, and present them to Jesus, recognizing him as our Savior and Lord, and ‘soon coming King.’

This Jesus promised to return to take us to be with Him in His Father’s house, which has many rooms (Jn. 14: 2). He invites us, who believe there is a God, to believe also in Him, and identifies himself as the Way, the Truth, and the Life, the one who alone leads us to the Father and his eternal dwelling place.

From a young age, I spent a lifetime, well into my adult years, afraid of death – which scripture says is the last fear to be conquered. I knew intuitively that death meant darkness, absence of contact with any other living being, and total conscious knowledge. So, I embarked on a search to determine if God was real and if life after death held more promise than what I faced in the bleak awareness that death was a frightening prospect.

Hidden in a dresser drawer was a relic from my Mom’s Catholic childhood, with a prayer that concluded, “Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.” I latched onto that because I was sure I needed prayer for the hour of my demise. It was perhaps one of the influences that eventually led to my embracing Catholicism as a young adult in my mid-20’s. What came entirely unexpected, a surprise to me, on receiving the communion bread for the 1st time as a Catholic, I had the awesome experience of knowing I was on the outside and had ‘stepped’ to the inside. I knew I had been received into a heavenly kingdom, that was eternal and irrevocable. And, it ended the fear of what I might face when I drew my last breath on earth. The darkness was infused with light, there was contact with a living God who was substantial and real, and I would consciously ‘know’ and be known for an eternity with him.

The irony is not lost on me that having harbored the inordinate fear of death from childhood on, I should end up being immersed as a Hospital Chaplain, in end of life ministry, dealing with dying and death – and counting it a privilege to journey with others through this final stage of life. I knew without a shadow of a doubt that the last breath here is the first breath there. I also saw that the God who has put eternity in our hearts makes himself known during those final end stages, be that days or hours, and those who never knew him can find he is there waiting for them.

My experience is one of the reasons I am so opposed to the current popularized physician assisted death, termed in Canada’s legislation “Medical Aid in Dying” (MAiD). People are robbing themselves of the opportunity to make their peace with the God who loves them and wants to welcome them into his Kingdom of light. Things that can only be addressed in those last days/hours cannot be settled in advance of the end stages. Death is not powerless, and the natural process of dying is a sacred, holy, privileged time for the person, and those journeying with them, that is not be short-circuited to alleviate the fear of suffering.

There is much to be learned and accomplished by completing the journey naturally for all concerned. Death is too final to miss out on the lessons it has to offer in the end of life journey, being supported and cared for those around. It is also a legacy and prepares the way for those who will follow. Dying too soon misses out on some very sacred moments that are not to be taken so lightly as to ignore the significance and meaning for the person who is dying and those who surround them with their love.

The God who came as that Babe in a manger, awaits each one of us, to shine light on our final journey and receive us into an eternal kingdom, with all those who have gone before us. Believing in Jesus, as the only begotten Son of the Father, is our entry ticket to that life.

Accept and Believe.