Dying

One of the things about being a pastor is that you get to, now and again, be with people during important times of their lives. It's the responsibility that one seminary professor described to me as "hatch, match, and dispatch." We baptize the babies. We marry the couples. We say nice things at the funeral. It's what we do.

Over the last seven years of my ministry at my wee kirk, I've lead and participated in several funerals. I've spent time with folks who were suffering from mortal illness. I've prayed at the bedside of the dying. I've done vigil with family. But in all that time, I'd never been with someone at the moment of death. In fact, I'd never seen a human being die. Not that instant, the instant when breath stops, when a heart stops beating, when organic life finally, permanently, ends.

Last night, I scarfed down Chinese food and returned to the beside of a dear old member of my church. I'd known Dick for years. I visited him during his dear wife's decline. I'd been spending more and more time with him, as Dick was basically alone in the world. He couldn't hear, couldn't really see, and had no immediate family. Late last week, Dick took ill. I got word that he'd gone downhill badly, so I'd been out to see him during the day. I prayed for him, read the 23rd Psalm, and read Isaiah, and talked to him about life and church and Spring.

He was right at the point of passing when I arrived last night. Shallow, labored breaths. Changed skin-tone. After chatting with a nurse who had befriended him, I stayed by his bedside. I talked to him about passing. About not fearing it. About the need to let go. About rest and the grace that awaits. I held his hand, which was cool to the touch. I watched him breathe, watched a vein on his neck pulse and pulse and pulse. I said a few more prayers, prayers of preparation and transition. It was very calm, and I felt still and spiritually tranquil.

At around 9:10 pm, three things happened. First, his breath hitched, then hitched again. Then once again, and stopped. Then, the throb in his neck slowed, and grew faint, and stilled. But as these two things happened, a third thing accompanied them.

I found it suddenly hard to see him. I didn't feel faint or anxious or upset. It was just that, for a moment, it was as if there was too much light in the room. It was like stepping out into the bright gold of the summer sun, in that moment when your eyes struggle to adjust, only with no discomfort. I blinked and tried to focus my eyes, but it didn't do anything. Then, after a moment, my vision returned to normal. My perception of the light was gone, and so was he.

I stayed with the empty husk for a while, and then mentioned to a nurse that he had passed. I made a call or two, and talked with the staff, and then left them to their work.

I drove home feeling deeply peaceful.

Lying about Dying

One of the noblest Christian callings I know is that of the hospice chaplain. Where most of us recoil from the suffering and loss that human beings feel as they are either dying or losing a loved one, hospice chaplains get right in there. It's not an easy thing, but helping people come to terms with their mortality and make the inescapable process of dying something not to be feared is a serious blessing.

The pastors I know who've taken on this task have found it both exhausting and rewarding. Though they were surrounded by death, they found that serving the dying was ultimately something that reinforced both their faith and the faith of others.

Like pastors, one of the core responsibilities of medical professionals is helping alleviate the suffering that comes when our mortal forms enter their endgame. Where pastors provide the comfort to the person who is preparing to pass on, doctors provide advice on care for the body, and give the needed nutritional and pharmacological inputs to insure that those last days and hours are not spent in pain.

This, more than anything else, is why the hysteria being manufactured around end-of-life provisions in the proposed health care reform plan is utterly reprehensible. American conservatism does have some good points to make about the sanctity and integrity of human life, and can provide a needed corrective to the consumerist tendency to view human beings as commodities or through the lenses of cost-benefit-analysis.

American shout radio and the right-wing blogosphere, however, are now declaring that those services and advice about how to take advantage of those services amounts to "euthanasia." That the proposed health care plan requires doctors to provide that advice is not "radical." It's necessary. It's a charge so divorced from the reality of end-of-life issues that it's functionally insane, but that doesn't matter. Radical-right groups like the Liberty Counsel couldn't care less about what is provably true. Their purpose is to accuse and accuse until they find something, anything, that sticks. It doesn't have to be real. It just has to stir doubt and further their ideological agenda.

Seeking fertile ground for that doubt, they feed into a natural fear that our seniors feel. Ours is a society that radically isolates and marginalizes the elderly, shattering the bonds of connection and community that valued and supported grandparents and great-grandparents. Whispering what is little more than a lie into that community plays off of that isolation. It may ultimately help derail this effort to fix our broken health "system." Deception is often effective at attaining short-term goals.

But ultimately, it represents a failure. It's a failure of our system, sure. But it is, more deeply, a sign of how American conservatism has failed. When a fundamental truth about human mortality is trampled under falsehoods uttered in service of a dogmatic ideology, I find it ironic that the folks who utter those falsehoods claim to be people of faith.