"And if anyone gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones because he is my disciple, I tell you the truth, he will certainly not lose his reward."
(Mat 10:42)
I did this the other day. I reached through a group of people to a grieving woman and offered her a bottle of water. I had the honour and privilege of sitting with her and her family as we waited for her mom to pass. And Mrs. D did pass. Gently, surrounded by her family, pastors, a hospice nurse and me the hospice volunteer. It was the first time I was at hospice working with a family while their loved one died. The loss of my first patient this time around. 14 years ago, 2000 miles and what seems like 5 zillion years ago I lost my first first aid patient on a highway. For a lot of obvious reasons this one was different. It was sad of course, but there was a sense of calmness and peace not anguish and great despair as I was expecting. Heaviness but no fear. I was ok with it. I know that because of my depression there's been a lot of question of if hospice; which everyone seems to think is a sad, sad place, is really the best choice for me? Won't it make me sadder? No, sadness isn't a part of my depression. As the rest of this article will show; doing good does ME good. I get more out of it than I put into it. Helping heals me.
So when I handed Mrs. D's daughter that bottle of water our eyes met and volumes of compassion, sympathy, empathy and grief passed between us. I knew that in that simple act I had made a difference to her; I had shown her Christ and we had both healed just a tiny bit.
I also knew that the pastors across town were wrong about me. Part of the "we're kicking you out of our church" conversation included a few lines about how I would never be allowed to minister in that church again. I've since learned that fear of the depressed person contaminating the flock is a common pastoral response to depression. The problem with that is that it works on the presumption that depression is some sort of chosen sin. And as someone said to me "if depression is sin then so are allergies." No go. Doesn't fly. As they say in the south "that dog don't hunt." As my friends and I were discussing today; sometimes proving people wrong is the best revenge. Or if not revenge then at least proving them wrong feels very, very satisfying.
On the way home from that conversation with the pastors I thought "waaaaaaaaaait a minute, they're saying God can't use me? but God used all sorts of broken people. Heck he even used a prostitute!" Yeah he did use a prostitute; her name was Rahab and her story is told in Joshua 2:1-21. This sermon http://www.mmcc.citymax.com/f/W3Healing_Rahab_ProstituteGodUsed.pdf by Pastor John Rayford of Mount Moriah Christian Church in Bloomington IL says that "your past does not determine your future and that God wants to use your brokenness to let others know that he is not through with you."
Some of this is more than knowing that even in my brokenness God can use me but also wanting to be used. It would be so easy not to. To say "why should I do nice things for people when people have been horrible to me?" The answer is simply: because it's good for you. As my grandmother would say: "when you feel bad do something good for someone else it will help you feel better."
In the 13th Century Francis Asisi wrote:
Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace;
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
and where there is sadness, joy.
O Divine Master,
grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console;
to be understood, as to understand;
to be loved, as to love;
for it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.
I would add that it is in healing that we heal. In helping we are helped.
Oh Pastor F, who are you to deny me that healing? If you had truly wanted me to get better then you would have pushed me towards ministry not kept me away from it.
Proverbs 4:23 says "above all else guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life." Normally I think of that verse as meaning that you're supposed to guard your heart from the dark stuff that could take root and take over. I've come to understand that it also means not letting your heart shrink. Like the Grinch, whose heart was 2 sizes too small seeing the good of others made his heart grow. Good works, volunteering, loving others as Christ loves them is sort of the armature that I stretch my heart over ensuring that it doesn't shrink. I've quoted the line in the Garth Brooks song before "I do this so the world will know that it will not change me."
Honestly, 8 months ago I didn't care if the world changed me; I didn't care about the size of my heart; I just didn't care what happened. And I've healed enough now that is does matter. For those of you familiar with spiritual warfare you'll see that for all we talk about the big spooky stuff; it comes down to offering a cup of water to a grieving daughter. Doing good when you're at your worst. Shining the light and confounding the darkness (my paraphrase of John1:5)
Showing posts with label hospice. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hospice. Show all posts
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Friday, April 23, 2010
Picture of mortality
Flipping through countless Easter pictures of my friends kids on Facebook. Most of the pictures alike; kids searching for eggs, kids with Easter baskets, kids in new Easter outfits. Easter in North America. A random click on a cousin's profile and new pictures. More kids; his nieces along with their parents and grandparents in the traditional "group pose" on vacation in Hawaii. I don't flip through this picture though. I pause on it giving it both my attention and emotions. A mixture of shock, nostalgia and happiness. Maybe it's because I miss the people in the photo. Maybe it's because I'm caught off guard about how much the girls have grown. Maybe it catches my attention because I'm jealous. I would LOVE to vacation with 3 generations of family in Hawaii. Port Clinton in July of this year will just have to do eh Dad? But I'm sure that the photo catches my eye because I have a similar picture downstairs.
Later this summer I'm planning on doing some photojournaling. Preserving the stories behind some family photos. I have a how to book that encourages picking out the photos and spending some time with them. Putting them in a visible spot and really examining the details. So I've started with a random one taken 36 years ago at our summer cabin. It's my uncle, my mom, 2 older cousins and myself. Mom and Uncle T sit in those old aluminum framed lawn chairs with the webbing; the boys and I are in various states of play in front of them. The sun shines in their eyes. My mom is wearing a chenille bathing suit because it is after all 1974. A random picture of every day life, or at least life on vacation. Life on vacation tends to move itself in suspended animation yet go by all too fast. To the little girls in the Hawaii picture it's their Dad and his first Daddy when Daddy was about their age.
Of all the pictures I have to work with I think I chose this one to start photo journaling with because I see just a glimpse of my cousins and myself as we are now in our parents. Like a reflection in shard of mirror. Not in how we physically look like them, but how we are becoming them. Or are they becoming us? Whatever it is for a fleeting second I'm reminded of their humanness. Maybe it's just because they're dead that I usually only think of them as parents. But in this hot summer day picture I'm reminded that they were real people. Parenting was one of their many roles. But in addition to that they were real people. My Mom was a woman who had sex, who missed her Mom and may or may not have loved shopping. (Part of the "deal" of losing a parent at a young age is that you don't get to learn any of these things about them.) As John McCrae said in "Flanders Fields" We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved... Soldiers, my parents, my hospice patients, my homeless brother; all human; all loved and were loved. Easy to forget, good reminder.
The other reason I chose this picture is because my mom and my uncle are dead. They have been for 15 and 28 years. Cancer took them both. But of course they didn't know that back in 1974 and that's what scares and fascinates me. They had no idea what the future would hold. Susan Sontag said “To take a photograph is to participate in another person's mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time's relentless melt.”
Their vulnerability scares me because I can relate to it. How many random pictures do I have that some day my kids will look back on and say "that was before............" "If only we had known then what we know now........." Yes I know that all of this should make me vow to live every day to the fullest. All the great country music song stuff like "Live like you were dying." And some day it will. But for now it freaks me out a bit. Honestly I'm afraid of dying young and leaving my kids behind. I know they'll be ok if that should happen. I'm proof of that; I have cousins who are proof of it, I have a step daughter and I'm still in contact with the children of 2 precious friends who died waaaaaaay too young. Knowing that death at a young age can and does happen makes me confront my own mortality. If it could happen to them it could happen to me. “Parents, however old they and we may grow to be, serve among other things to shield us from a sense of our doom. As long as they are around, we can avoid the fact of our mortality; we can still be innocent children.” Jane Howard.
And what if I don't die young? What if I DON'T share the same fate as my mom and uncle? What if I get old? Without a picture of my own mom at 70 then I'll be honest and admit that getting older without her as a road map kind of scares me. As the class of 1990 approaches our "cough" 20th reunion there's a new question on the horizon for the first time; aging. There's a line in another song that says "I still remember when 30 was old." Heck I do too! And honestly I think that 40 is old. But it's gaining on me. I looked up an ailment the other day on line that basically said "well, that's what happens as you approach middle age." MIDDLE AGE? MIDDLE AGE?! Maybe it's my work with hospice that's making me think "when I get old, when I prepare to die I'll do....." How did that question get in my head? It's sort of like 10 years ago going to an endless string of friends weddings and thinking "when I get married I'll............" Or making a birth plan for having babies; this is what I want this is what I don't want.
I've mentioned before "The American Book of Living and Dying" by Groves and Klauser who maintains that the dying are teachers. I'm not at the point with my hospice work or patients where I can say that I've really learned cues on how to live and die well. Yeah obviously I've picked up the belief that hospice is the only way to go, that I want a Do Not Resuscitate order, I want to take my own quilts in and a moving picture frame. But other than that not much yet. Maybe I've been too busy learning the ropes to take the time to be observant but it will come I'm sure. For now the knowledge that I'm mortal and that everyone is human is a start. Loved and were loved..........
Later this summer I'm planning on doing some photojournaling. Preserving the stories behind some family photos. I have a how to book that encourages picking out the photos and spending some time with them. Putting them in a visible spot and really examining the details. So I've started with a random one taken 36 years ago at our summer cabin. It's my uncle, my mom, 2 older cousins and myself. Mom and Uncle T sit in those old aluminum framed lawn chairs with the webbing; the boys and I are in various states of play in front of them. The sun shines in their eyes. My mom is wearing a chenille bathing suit because it is after all 1974. A random picture of every day life, or at least life on vacation. Life on vacation tends to move itself in suspended animation yet go by all too fast. To the little girls in the Hawaii picture it's their Dad and his first Daddy when Daddy was about their age.
Of all the pictures I have to work with I think I chose this one to start photo journaling with because I see just a glimpse of my cousins and myself as we are now in our parents. Like a reflection in shard of mirror. Not in how we physically look like them, but how we are becoming them. Or are they becoming us? Whatever it is for a fleeting second I'm reminded of their humanness. Maybe it's just because they're dead that I usually only think of them as parents. But in this hot summer day picture I'm reminded that they were real people. Parenting was one of their many roles. But in addition to that they were real people. My Mom was a woman who had sex, who missed her Mom and may or may not have loved shopping. (Part of the "deal" of losing a parent at a young age is that you don't get to learn any of these things about them.) As John McCrae said in "Flanders Fields" We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved... Soldiers, my parents, my hospice patients, my homeless brother; all human; all loved and were loved. Easy to forget, good reminder.
The other reason I chose this picture is because my mom and my uncle are dead. They have been for 15 and 28 years. Cancer took them both. But of course they didn't know that back in 1974 and that's what scares and fascinates me. They had no idea what the future would hold. Susan Sontag said “To take a photograph is to participate in another person's mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time's relentless melt.”
Their vulnerability scares me because I can relate to it. How many random pictures do I have that some day my kids will look back on and say "that was before............" "If only we had known then what we know now........." Yes I know that all of this should make me vow to live every day to the fullest. All the great country music song stuff like "Live like you were dying." And some day it will. But for now it freaks me out a bit. Honestly I'm afraid of dying young and leaving my kids behind. I know they'll be ok if that should happen. I'm proof of that; I have cousins who are proof of it, I have a step daughter and I'm still in contact with the children of 2 precious friends who died waaaaaaay too young. Knowing that death at a young age can and does happen makes me confront my own mortality. If it could happen to them it could happen to me. “Parents, however old they and we may grow to be, serve among other things to shield us from a sense of our doom. As long as they are around, we can avoid the fact of our mortality; we can still be innocent children.” Jane Howard.
And what if I don't die young? What if I DON'T share the same fate as my mom and uncle? What if I get old? Without a picture of my own mom at 70 then I'll be honest and admit that getting older without her as a road map kind of scares me. As the class of 1990 approaches our "cough" 20th reunion there's a new question on the horizon for the first time; aging. There's a line in another song that says "I still remember when 30 was old." Heck I do too! And honestly I think that 40 is old. But it's gaining on me. I looked up an ailment the other day on line that basically said "well, that's what happens as you approach middle age." MIDDLE AGE? MIDDLE AGE?! Maybe it's my work with hospice that's making me think "when I get old, when I prepare to die I'll do....." How did that question get in my head? It's sort of like 10 years ago going to an endless string of friends weddings and thinking "when I get married I'll............" Or making a birth plan for having babies; this is what I want this is what I don't want.
I've mentioned before "The American Book of Living and Dying" by Groves and Klauser who maintains that the dying are teachers. I'm not at the point with my hospice work or patients where I can say that I've really learned cues on how to live and die well. Yeah obviously I've picked up the belief that hospice is the only way to go, that I want a Do Not Resuscitate order, I want to take my own quilts in and a moving picture frame. But other than that not much yet. Maybe I've been too busy learning the ropes to take the time to be observant but it will come I'm sure. For now the knowledge that I'm mortal and that everyone is human is a start. Loved and were loved..........
Friday, April 9, 2010
Jesus woud make a milkshake
I started volunteering for a local hospice last week. As far as picking an organization to volunteer with goes, it was a pretty obvious choice because like I said my family has been involved with them for the last 15 years. In terms of "why now?" it was also pretty obvious. At the turn of the year I realized that I was becoming increasingly frustrated with the lack or complication of serving at my church. I am all about practical ministry. I believe 100% in the power of prayer but I also believe in the old adage of "preach the gospel at all times; use words when necessary." The church we were at made that hard. There were few opportunities to love on people in a practical manner and what there was required training and long term time commitments. Mind you hospice does too. I went through a 6 week course and will do another 5 week one as soon as it's offered. I also had a criminal record check. But that was it, no committees, no selection process; just go and care for people.
So last Saturday I had my first volunteer shift at the hospice wing of a local hospital. As it was my first shift I got to shadow a couple of experienced volunteers. The first lady was an about to retire kindergarten teacher. I gave her my Easter Bunny purse. I had picked it up the day before at my favorite thrift shop for $1.79 knowing that hospice people would love it and also knowing that if anybody admired it I would give it to them (not the first time I've done that.) Sure enough the teacher admired it and I gave it to her, shuffling the stuff that was in it to a zip lock bag. She laughed and told me about the time when a fellow teacher admired her Valentine's Day skirt and asked to borrow it. The teacher took it off and gave it to her at the end of the day. She wore her under slip and raincoat home.
The second volunteer I shadowed was probably one of the kindest people I've met in a long time. She just loved on the patients. Love oozed from her. One of the patients was a grandpa and at some point in our shift one of his daughters and granddaughters, and family dog came for a visit. Yes pets of all sorts are welcome in hospice. The workers even find loving homes for them once their owners pass. The grand daughter was about 12 maybe? Too old for the toy room down the hall. She was bored, as I'm sure most people visiting hospice, or even hospital patients are. After you've given the latest news there really isn't much to say or do. Now I'm reading "The American Book of Living and Dying" which I'm sure will argue that there's lots to do with the dying; they are teachers after all. But for the most part.......... Basically you're waiting. In hospitals you're waiting for the patient to get better and get out of there. In hospices you're waiting for the end of life to come. Waiting is exhausting. Mentally and physically taxing.
The volunteer I was with offered to make the girl a milkshake. A small well stocked kitchen with ice cream and a blender would make it possible. The little girl shyly refused but it's a gesture that I don't think I'll ever forget. Love is making a child a milkshake while she sits by her grandfather's bedside. There are no rules, no policy's and procedures, no permission needed. Just love on a child who's probably feeling out of place and scared. Just love.
It reminded me of "the" Tony Campolo story. You know the one where he threw a birthday party for a hooker? Don't know it? You're amongst the few then. Seems back in the day I had a pastor that must have been especially fond of Compolo because twice over the course of a few years he told the birthday party for a hooker story. After hearing him tell it the second time I left for a youth conference where Tony Campolo just happened to be speaking. And what story do you suppose he told? Yep, the birthday party for a hooker story.
So the story goes like this. Tony, who's a well known (especially to pastors from Saskatchewan) Christian speaker found himself at a divey restaurant in Honolulu at 3:30 in the morning one day. In walks a bunch of hookers and he here's one named Agnes (I'll pause while some of you smile at that because I AM NOT making that up) say that it's her birthday the next day. Well Tony decided right then and there to throw her a birthday party the next day. Sure enough he shows up with cake and streamers the whole bit. The hooker is of course moved and Tony of course prays for her.
When he's finished, Harry (the restaurant owner) leans over, and with a trace of hostility in his voice, he says, "Hey, you never told me you was a preacher. What kind of church do you belong to anyway?"
In one of those moments when just the right words came, Tony answers him quietly, "I belong to a church that throws birthday parties for prostitutes at 3:30 in the morning."
Harry thinks for a moment, and in a mocking way says, "No you don't. There ain't no church like that. If there was, I'd join it. Yep, I'd join a church like that."
http://www.swapmeetdave.com/Bible/Agnes.htm
I've been through a lot lately. Stuff that makes me question God, his wisdom, his character. But one thing I do know is that if Jesus were here he'd throw a birthday party for a hooker and make a 12 year old a chocolate milk shake.
So last Saturday I had my first volunteer shift at the hospice wing of a local hospital. As it was my first shift I got to shadow a couple of experienced volunteers. The first lady was an about to retire kindergarten teacher. I gave her my Easter Bunny purse. I had picked it up the day before at my favorite thrift shop for $1.79 knowing that hospice people would love it and also knowing that if anybody admired it I would give it to them (not the first time I've done that.) Sure enough the teacher admired it and I gave it to her, shuffling the stuff that was in it to a zip lock bag. She laughed and told me about the time when a fellow teacher admired her Valentine's Day skirt and asked to borrow it. The teacher took it off and gave it to her at the end of the day. She wore her under slip and raincoat home.
The second volunteer I shadowed was probably one of the kindest people I've met in a long time. She just loved on the patients. Love oozed from her. One of the patients was a grandpa and at some point in our shift one of his daughters and granddaughters, and family dog came for a visit. Yes pets of all sorts are welcome in hospice. The workers even find loving homes for them once their owners pass. The grand daughter was about 12 maybe? Too old for the toy room down the hall. She was bored, as I'm sure most people visiting hospice, or even hospital patients are. After you've given the latest news there really isn't much to say or do. Now I'm reading "The American Book of Living and Dying" which I'm sure will argue that there's lots to do with the dying; they are teachers after all. But for the most part.......... Basically you're waiting. In hospitals you're waiting for the patient to get better and get out of there. In hospices you're waiting for the end of life to come. Waiting is exhausting. Mentally and physically taxing.
The volunteer I was with offered to make the girl a milkshake. A small well stocked kitchen with ice cream and a blender would make it possible. The little girl shyly refused but it's a gesture that I don't think I'll ever forget. Love is making a child a milkshake while she sits by her grandfather's bedside. There are no rules, no policy's and procedures, no permission needed. Just love on a child who's probably feeling out of place and scared. Just love.
It reminded me of "the" Tony Campolo story. You know the one where he threw a birthday party for a hooker? Don't know it? You're amongst the few then. Seems back in the day I had a pastor that must have been especially fond of Compolo because twice over the course of a few years he told the birthday party for a hooker story. After hearing him tell it the second time I left for a youth conference where Tony Campolo just happened to be speaking. And what story do you suppose he told? Yep, the birthday party for a hooker story.
So the story goes like this. Tony, who's a well known (especially to pastors from Saskatchewan) Christian speaker found himself at a divey restaurant in Honolulu at 3:30 in the morning one day. In walks a bunch of hookers and he here's one named Agnes (I'll pause while some of you smile at that because I AM NOT making that up) say that it's her birthday the next day. Well Tony decided right then and there to throw her a birthday party the next day. Sure enough he shows up with cake and streamers the whole bit. The hooker is of course moved and Tony of course prays for her.
When he's finished, Harry (the restaurant owner) leans over, and with a trace of hostility in his voice, he says, "Hey, you never told me you was a preacher. What kind of church do you belong to anyway?"
In one of those moments when just the right words came, Tony answers him quietly, "I belong to a church that throws birthday parties for prostitutes at 3:30 in the morning."
Harry thinks for a moment, and in a mocking way says, "No you don't. There ain't no church like that. If there was, I'd join it. Yep, I'd join a church like that."
http://www.swapmeetdave.com/Bible/Agnes.htm
I've been through a lot lately. Stuff that makes me question God, his wisdom, his character. But one thing I do know is that if Jesus were here he'd throw a birthday party for a hooker and make a 12 year old a chocolate milk shake.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
3rd floor please
The 37 1/2 year old version of me got on an elevator and pressed the button for the third floor today. It was only my second time on in In Patient Unit at the hospice; but it for sure won't be my last time. Today I sat down with a volunteer co-ordinator to discuss my areas of interest in volunteering with hospice and as soon as the paper work comes back I can start. In the mirror of the elevator I caught a glimpse of the 22 year old me, who all those years ago also punched an upward number and headed to a hospice office.
At the time I was on my way to what I know would call an anticipatory grief counsellor. My mom had just been diagnosed with cancer and she was dying fast. It has been said that you don't find hospice, hospice finds you. You could say the same thing about death; nobody goes looking for it, it finds you. Death had made it's customary appearances in my childhood. Lurking in the corners as it often does not really affecting you but just letting you know that it's there. There was the death of a distant grandma, then 2 uncles in the same year none of who's funerals I went to. When I was 16 a favorite friend committed suicide; death rode up boldly to center stage of my life. It was a collective experience, I can't remember the death of M without talking about it in terms of "we." We standing for all my classmates. We lost a friend. And like the rabbits in Watership Down we clung to each other in fear of death personified like they did in fear of The Black Rabbit of Inle. Then as quickly as he had come death slipped away again. His shadow wouldn't sneak up on me until late college.
It was the equivalent of the literary device called foreshadowing; something happened that would give clues about what was to happen. We were doing group presentations for a geography class I think. It was the morning of the presentation and one of my friends in my group didn't show up. It was looooooong before the age of texting and we had no idea where she was. I was frustrated and disappointed. A week later she returned and told us that her Mom had died rather unexpectedly. "Mom's die?" how sad. It was so sad that I went home that night and discussed with my Mom how sad it would be for her to die. A few months later my Mom WAS dead. A few years later my Dad would marry that same friend from college's aunt and we would become step cousins. Foreshadowing........
In my head there's a line or memory of demarcation. A memory that stands as the last normal, stable thing before the world crashed around me. I wonder if every crisis has that? Has the "one moment we were doing X and then the phone rang" moment. One moment I was trying to shut the morning news off and then........... One moment I was arguing with my husband and then.............. One moment we were laughing in the rain and then................ Yeah, the major stuff comes with those moments. So one moment I was registering for summer school at college. Listening to Garth Brook's "Ain't Goin' Down "Til The Sun Comes Up" on a yellow Sony walkman and the next moment my Mom was being diagnosed with cancer and told that she only had 2 months to live.
I was an only child, and while we didn't have a diagnosis then it's clear to me now that I had depression back then. In a move that would change the course of all of our lives my Dad got me an appointment counsellor. Death had found my family. He had us in his cross hairs. Hospice also found us. One of those organizations that you have no idea even exist until you need them and then you're sure glad they're there. 5 years ago my oldest son was medi-vaced to a hospital in another state upon his birth. Ronald McDonald House stepped in and gave us a place to stay. That's another organization that you don't know anything about until you need to.
I don't remember the counsellors name and only some of what we talked about but I remember feeling very relieved when I left one of our sessions. You know how in the movies families gather at the deathbed of a loved one and everyone is happy and close? Here's something you don't see in the movies; sometimes families argue all through a death. Arguments so big doors are slammed. Sometimes old sins are dragged out. Sometimes scape goats are created. Sometimes families fall apart and people leave. My family was one of those. I was the grieving person who wanted to talk about it. Who wanted to know exactly how long my mom had and how the death would happen. I dared to imagine that my life would continue without my Mom and that thought scared me. Yes I was self centered, yes some nights I was more concerned about what I was going to wear to a party than my moms health but that was ok. Hospice told me so. Hospice told me that it was ok to grieve the way I was grieving and that talking about death didn't make it happen. When my Mom died 9 weeks after diagnosis a hospice volunteer met me at the house and she was the only person I let into my room that night. Hospice pulled me through.
Shortly after that my Dad joined the board of directors at hospice. They went on to build a 12 bed free standing hospice house. Both my parents volunteer there regularly as well as for their thrift shop and in other areas. A year ago a childhood friend of mine came to live out his last days in "the house" as we call it. Honestly, that caught me a little off guard. While I know that Vancouver has a children's hospice called Canuck Place, I still equate hospice, or maybe just long term dying with the old. C wasn't old. He couldn't be, his birthday is the day before mine. In my head the house was built so that people like my mom wouldn't have to die in a hospital nor a living room. It wasn't built for extraordinary young men. But I'm sure glad it was there. Last week a friends mom died. She was an amazing lady and although I'm sad that she died I'm thrilled that she died in hospice. It seemed a fitting and dignified end to a life well lead. I miss you Jaquie.........
And so all these years and all these states later my work with hospice begins. I hope that one day years from now someone will say of my bereavement counselling that "she got me through." Comforting from where you have been comforted right? Giving back.......... It's going to be hard I'm sure; but worth it. My current work with doing began today by getting back into an elevator.
At the time I was on my way to what I know would call an anticipatory grief counsellor. My mom had just been diagnosed with cancer and she was dying fast. It has been said that you don't find hospice, hospice finds you. You could say the same thing about death; nobody goes looking for it, it finds you. Death had made it's customary appearances in my childhood. Lurking in the corners as it often does not really affecting you but just letting you know that it's there. There was the death of a distant grandma, then 2 uncles in the same year none of who's funerals I went to. When I was 16 a favorite friend committed suicide; death rode up boldly to center stage of my life. It was a collective experience, I can't remember the death of M without talking about it in terms of "we." We standing for all my classmates. We lost a friend. And like the rabbits in Watership Down we clung to each other in fear of death personified like they did in fear of The Black Rabbit of Inle. Then as quickly as he had come death slipped away again. His shadow wouldn't sneak up on me until late college.
It was the equivalent of the literary device called foreshadowing; something happened that would give clues about what was to happen. We were doing group presentations for a geography class I think. It was the morning of the presentation and one of my friends in my group didn't show up. It was looooooong before the age of texting and we had no idea where she was. I was frustrated and disappointed. A week later she returned and told us that her Mom had died rather unexpectedly. "Mom's die?" how sad. It was so sad that I went home that night and discussed with my Mom how sad it would be for her to die. A few months later my Mom WAS dead. A few years later my Dad would marry that same friend from college's aunt and we would become step cousins. Foreshadowing........
In my head there's a line or memory of demarcation. A memory that stands as the last normal, stable thing before the world crashed around me. I wonder if every crisis has that? Has the "one moment we were doing X and then the phone rang" moment. One moment I was trying to shut the morning news off and then........... One moment I was arguing with my husband and then.............. One moment we were laughing in the rain and then................ Yeah, the major stuff comes with those moments. So one moment I was registering for summer school at college. Listening to Garth Brook's "Ain't Goin' Down "Til The Sun Comes Up" on a yellow Sony walkman and the next moment my Mom was being diagnosed with cancer and told that she only had 2 months to live.
I was an only child, and while we didn't have a diagnosis then it's clear to me now that I had depression back then. In a move that would change the course of all of our lives my Dad got me an appointment counsellor. Death had found my family. He had us in his cross hairs. Hospice also found us. One of those organizations that you have no idea even exist until you need them and then you're sure glad they're there. 5 years ago my oldest son was medi-vaced to a hospital in another state upon his birth. Ronald McDonald House stepped in and gave us a place to stay. That's another organization that you don't know anything about until you need to.
I don't remember the counsellors name and only some of what we talked about but I remember feeling very relieved when I left one of our sessions. You know how in the movies families gather at the deathbed of a loved one and everyone is happy and close? Here's something you don't see in the movies; sometimes families argue all through a death. Arguments so big doors are slammed. Sometimes old sins are dragged out. Sometimes scape goats are created. Sometimes families fall apart and people leave. My family was one of those. I was the grieving person who wanted to talk about it. Who wanted to know exactly how long my mom had and how the death would happen. I dared to imagine that my life would continue without my Mom and that thought scared me. Yes I was self centered, yes some nights I was more concerned about what I was going to wear to a party than my moms health but that was ok. Hospice told me so. Hospice told me that it was ok to grieve the way I was grieving and that talking about death didn't make it happen. When my Mom died 9 weeks after diagnosis a hospice volunteer met me at the house and she was the only person I let into my room that night. Hospice pulled me through.
Shortly after that my Dad joined the board of directors at hospice. They went on to build a 12 bed free standing hospice house. Both my parents volunteer there regularly as well as for their thrift shop and in other areas. A year ago a childhood friend of mine came to live out his last days in "the house" as we call it. Honestly, that caught me a little off guard. While I know that Vancouver has a children's hospice called Canuck Place, I still equate hospice, or maybe just long term dying with the old. C wasn't old. He couldn't be, his birthday is the day before mine. In my head the house was built so that people like my mom wouldn't have to die in a hospital nor a living room. It wasn't built for extraordinary young men. But I'm sure glad it was there. Last week a friends mom died. She was an amazing lady and although I'm sad that she died I'm thrilled that she died in hospice. It seemed a fitting and dignified end to a life well lead. I miss you Jaquie.........
And so all these years and all these states later my work with hospice begins. I hope that one day years from now someone will say of my bereavement counselling that "she got me through." Comforting from where you have been comforted right? Giving back.......... It's going to be hard I'm sure; but worth it. My current work with doing began today by getting back into an elevator.
Friday, February 5, 2010
Just listen!
I'm taking the training necessary to become a Hospice volunteer. My parents volunteer for this hospice: http://kamloopshospice.com/ and I volunteer for this one: http://www.steinhospice.org One of the units we covered this week was listening skills. I'll be the first to admit that I'm NOT the best listener. I once heard someone say that "some people don't listen they just wait for their turn to talk." I could relate to that because I was/am one of those people. It's not that I don't care what you're saying it's just that I'm so full of my next big idea to tell you. Until this summer. Then I learned the importance of listening. How do you learn the importance of listening? By having a need to be listened to.
I was in the middle of a major life crisis that had spun off into another major life or death crisis. I reached out to somebody, told them what was going on and they in turn gave me all sorts of solutions to the crisis. My reaction? To throw the phone across the car! Why? Because at that moment in time, as big as the crisis was I didn't want advice, the right thing to do was obvious, what I wanted was to be listened to.
Fast forward 6 hours, arriving home alone to a house with sleeping children and the red light on the answering machine blinking. I hit "play" and instantly the voice of a very old, very distant friend filled the room. He had read between the lines of a vague facebook status and had sensed something was up. Not only up but desperately, desperately wrong. His response was to bestow upon me one of the best gifts I've ever received; the gift of listening. His message told me to call him back immediately and that he and his wife wanted to listen to me until I felt better. How can you turn down an offer like that? One press of "re-dial" and I began a verbal purge. The current crisis came out, a bunch of other stuff came out. Fears, worries, stressors. Old secrets and ancient traumas all spilled forth. My friends listened compassionately and in a way that encouraged me to keep talking. They listened and I felt safe. Safe to throw my relationships, my culture and my religion all under the bus. 2 hours later I was drained and they were still attentive. When it was done I felt a certain sense of freedom; freedom from all those things that had been weighing me down and that I had been carrying. I had been listened to thoroughly and lovingly.
There's an anonymous poem that says it so well.
"LISTEN
When I ask you to listen to me and you start giving me advice, you have not done what I asked.
When I ask you to listen to me and you begin to tell me why I shouldn't feel that way, you are trampling on my feelings.
When I ask you to listen to me and you feel you have to do something to solve my problem, you have failed me, strange as that may seem.
Listen! All I ask is that you listen. Don't talk or do - just hear me.
Advice is cheap; 20 cents will get you both Dear Abby and Billy Graham in the same newspaper.
And I can do for myself; I am not helpless. Maybe discouraged and faltering, but not helpless.
When you do something for me that I can and need to do for myself, you contribute to my fear and inadequacy.
But when you accept as a simple fact that I feel what I feel, no matter how irrational, then I can stop trying to convince you and get about this business of understanding what's behind this irrational feeling. And when that's clear, the answers are obvious and I don't need advice. Irrational feelings make sense when we understand what's behind them."
Except for the days when I don't want to be listened to. Those are the days I want somebody to DO something. I was recently told that I have a rescuers personality and the context that it was put into was not good. I'll agree, I do rescue and I'm proud of it. In my own defense I come by it honestly; all 3 of my parents were and are the type to not sit idly by and watch somebody suffer. We are jump in and get involved people. Not only was I an industrial first aider but I spent a long time being involved with the competitive part and people of it. First aiders at all levels participate in competitions to prepare ourselves for emergencies. Mine rescuers compete, so do ski patrolers and life guards. People's lives get saved. I've always known that everybody can do something to help no matter how small. The only sin is in not getting involved. It goes back to the old thing about "there's no small parts only small players." I remember attending to an accident in a local park one night as a very junior first aider. All the big, cool life saving stuff was being handled by those people who could build all the first aid equipment they would ever need out of a roll of duck tape. I was assigned the very unglamourous job of paper work. In the dark, on the ground. And although I might have seen the grunt work as unimportant I knew that the pressure was on me to get it right. Somebody in the crowd saw me struggling and turned their bike light on me to help me out. Everybody does something.
I've also learned a heck of a lot from a certain grandmother figure whose rally cry has always been "I don't want to be ornamental I want to be practical!" From her I learned not just to offer to help a person in crisis but to see a need and fill it. To show up at the house of someone who has lost a loved one with a casserole (in a foil pan so it doesn't have to be returned thank you) in one hand and the stuff to scrub the bathroom with in the other.
I've got to admit that in my current turmoil I'd appreciate if somebody would do something to help. Either offer to be the intermediary between ourselves and the other party or come over with that casserole. If one more person tells me to pray about it or to wait on God about it I will scream! Yes I want God, I want him with skin on!
I know that I've got some growing to do (don't we all?) One of the tenants of hospice is to let people die naturally and with dignity. Let nature take its course without a lot of interventions including CPR the skill I once prided myself in knowing everything about. As per patients wishes I may not be to "do" anything. And that may be for the better. Same with parenting. There are days when you stay up late re-tying an essay for a child and days when you watch them leave their lunch on the counter as they walk out the door. Learning to un-rescue may be as much of a learned skill as learning TO rescue.
I guess what I'm saying is that there is a place for both listening and doing. To everything there is a season right? There are days or situations when I need to be listened to and not have the problem fixed and there are days and situations when I want practical help? Can't tell which day it is? Just ask, I'll be glad to tell you. And what I hope is that when my turn comes I'll be able to help you with your needs; lest the phone be thrown down.
I was in the middle of a major life crisis that had spun off into another major life or death crisis. I reached out to somebody, told them what was going on and they in turn gave me all sorts of solutions to the crisis. My reaction? To throw the phone across the car! Why? Because at that moment in time, as big as the crisis was I didn't want advice, the right thing to do was obvious, what I wanted was to be listened to.
Fast forward 6 hours, arriving home alone to a house with sleeping children and the red light on the answering machine blinking. I hit "play" and instantly the voice of a very old, very distant friend filled the room. He had read between the lines of a vague facebook status and had sensed something was up. Not only up but desperately, desperately wrong. His response was to bestow upon me one of the best gifts I've ever received; the gift of listening. His message told me to call him back immediately and that he and his wife wanted to listen to me until I felt better. How can you turn down an offer like that? One press of "re-dial" and I began a verbal purge. The current crisis came out, a bunch of other stuff came out. Fears, worries, stressors. Old secrets and ancient traumas all spilled forth. My friends listened compassionately and in a way that encouraged me to keep talking. They listened and I felt safe. Safe to throw my relationships, my culture and my religion all under the bus. 2 hours later I was drained and they were still attentive. When it was done I felt a certain sense of freedom; freedom from all those things that had been weighing me down and that I had been carrying. I had been listened to thoroughly and lovingly.
There's an anonymous poem that says it so well.
"LISTEN
When I ask you to listen to me and you start giving me advice, you have not done what I asked.
When I ask you to listen to me and you begin to tell me why I shouldn't feel that way, you are trampling on my feelings.
When I ask you to listen to me and you feel you have to do something to solve my problem, you have failed me, strange as that may seem.
Listen! All I ask is that you listen. Don't talk or do - just hear me.
Advice is cheap; 20 cents will get you both Dear Abby and Billy Graham in the same newspaper.
And I can do for myself; I am not helpless. Maybe discouraged and faltering, but not helpless.
When you do something for me that I can and need to do for myself, you contribute to my fear and inadequacy.
But when you accept as a simple fact that I feel what I feel, no matter how irrational, then I can stop trying to convince you and get about this business of understanding what's behind this irrational feeling. And when that's clear, the answers are obvious and I don't need advice. Irrational feelings make sense when we understand what's behind them."
Except for the days when I don't want to be listened to. Those are the days I want somebody to DO something. I was recently told that I have a rescuers personality and the context that it was put into was not good. I'll agree, I do rescue and I'm proud of it. In my own defense I come by it honestly; all 3 of my parents were and are the type to not sit idly by and watch somebody suffer. We are jump in and get involved people. Not only was I an industrial first aider but I spent a long time being involved with the competitive part and people of it. First aiders at all levels participate in competitions to prepare ourselves for emergencies. Mine rescuers compete, so do ski patrolers and life guards. People's lives get saved. I've always known that everybody can do something to help no matter how small. The only sin is in not getting involved. It goes back to the old thing about "there's no small parts only small players." I remember attending to an accident in a local park one night as a very junior first aider. All the big, cool life saving stuff was being handled by those people who could build all the first aid equipment they would ever need out of a roll of duck tape. I was assigned the very unglamourous job of paper work. In the dark, on the ground. And although I might have seen the grunt work as unimportant I knew that the pressure was on me to get it right. Somebody in the crowd saw me struggling and turned their bike light on me to help me out. Everybody does something.
I've also learned a heck of a lot from a certain grandmother figure whose rally cry has always been "I don't want to be ornamental I want to be practical!" From her I learned not just to offer to help a person in crisis but to see a need and fill it. To show up at the house of someone who has lost a loved one with a casserole (in a foil pan so it doesn't have to be returned thank you) in one hand and the stuff to scrub the bathroom with in the other.
I've got to admit that in my current turmoil I'd appreciate if somebody would do something to help. Either offer to be the intermediary between ourselves and the other party or come over with that casserole. If one more person tells me to pray about it or to wait on God about it I will scream! Yes I want God, I want him with skin on!
I know that I've got some growing to do (don't we all?) One of the tenants of hospice is to let people die naturally and with dignity. Let nature take its course without a lot of interventions including CPR the skill I once prided myself in knowing everything about. As per patients wishes I may not be to "do" anything. And that may be for the better. Same with parenting. There are days when you stay up late re-tying an essay for a child and days when you watch them leave their lunch on the counter as they walk out the door. Learning to un-rescue may be as much of a learned skill as learning TO rescue.
I guess what I'm saying is that there is a place for both listening and doing. To everything there is a season right? There are days or situations when I need to be listened to and not have the problem fixed and there are days and situations when I want practical help? Can't tell which day it is? Just ask, I'll be glad to tell you. And what I hope is that when my turn comes I'll be able to help you with your needs; lest the phone be thrown down.
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