A good death
I witnessed a powerful death in a week and a half ago that I’d like to tell you about.
About eleven in the morning, I got a page from an ICU nurse alerting me to a “compassionate extubation.” I was covering a weekend chaplain shift at the hospital. The page wasn’t from the nurse I was expecting. I had been waiting for the page regarding a death I knew was imminent in another ICU. This one, unlike most of the deaths I have been called to since March of this year, wasn’t Covid-related.
Rather, a woman with many adult children was in the process of dying and her children had decided to have her breathing tube removed. This decision was painful, not because they weren’t sure they were making the right decision for her, but because just days prior she had seemed well. To have to make this decision was a complete surprise to them.
I entered the patient’s room where her children stood around her bed. Grown men and One of the sisters, while not the oldest, was obviously their leader. She quieted her brothers and sisters when I walked into the room so that they could hear me when I offered to pray. She held two of her siblings up so that they could stand, one leaning on each of her shoulders, both of them towering over her. She told me all about her mother so that I could know the woman I was going to pray for.
When the family was ready for the respiratory therapist to come in and remove their mother’s breathing tube, I prayed from the Book of Common Prayer, my voice a low murmur over the sobbing and bidding of goodbyes: “Receive her into the arms of your mercy, into the blessed rest of everlasting peace, and into the glorious copmany of the saints in light.”
And then I stepped out of the room and waited while they shared their final moments with their mother.
Ten minutes later, the patient’s nurse and I listened incredulously as these brothers and sisters began shouting, “Go mama! You got this! Keeping going! Keeping going mama! Go! Go! Go!” A brief moment of silence passed, like that moment when all the cicadas on a hot summer evening stop singing in perfect unison, waiting for their next cue. Their mama must have taken her last breath, and the family took their cue: they began to cheer and clap and whoop in celebration.
These brave, strong, aching children of a woman cheered her on right through to her life’s finishing line. They stood together and celebrated a life-well lived, a life they told me was full of love and joy for her children, a life lived with abiding commitment to her family and friends and community.
I weep as I write this. The divine drew impossibly near in that hospital room, rushing in, shooting through that moment, breaking it open, and filling it with pure, selfless love. The veil between the finite and infinite, between now and eternity, between earth and heaven was so tissue thin. And I had the privilege of standing just outside the door of where it all took place.
My wish, my prayer, my hope for all of you, fellow seekers, is that you can recall for yourself this week those thinly veiled moments, where you felt deeply connected with something well beyond yourself.
And if you have a story of one such moment, let me know! I hope to build a community of sorts out of this newsletter and there’s nothing that builds a community quite like shared stories.
-Meghan
This week’s links:
I don’t have links for you because my family has experienced a different kind of loss this week: my husband was laid off from his job of 16 years. My friend, whose own husband experienced similar loss several years ago, helped me to see that we’d have to treat this loss like a death. Fortunately, I’ve learned a lot about comforting people in grief, and I’m drawing on that experience now, turning to our support networks for comfort and strength and giving ourselves some time to just experience the grief.
Some housekeeping:
It’s also probably a good time to let you know that I’d like to keep this newsletter completely free, but that I hope in the future if you like it and find it helpful for your own process of seeking and making meaning out of what can feel like a messy, confusing, but beautiful life, that you’ll consider supporting it by subscribing and sharing.
I’m also in the process of getting all the bits and bobs of this newsletter together, so thanks for your patience on that. I know I need an about page! I know I need a logo! (By the way, if you’d like to make me a logo, maybe we can strike a deal?) I promise to have those things together soon!