Death bed perspective on families.

[_Fence Sitter]

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.

Interesting short article on death bed conversations about family.



http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/01/28/my-faith-what-people-talk-about-before-they-die/?hpt=hp_c1

[_Blixa]

That was an interesting article, Fence Sitter.

It reminded me of an online friend who is a hospice worker and one of the most amazingly emotionally generous people I've heard of. She once wrote about taking care of her own mother in hospice, a woman who she'd had a very problematic relationship with her entire life, and how the "ritual" of giving her the loving care she extends to all her patients helped her to make peace with her mother.

[_Fence Sitter]

That was an interesting article, Fence Sitter.

It reminded me of an online friend who is a hospice worker and one of the most amazingly emotionally generous people I've heard of. She once wrote about taking care of her own mother in hospice, a woman who she'd had a very problematic relationship with her entire life, and how the "ritual" of giving her the loving care she extends to all her patients helped her to make peace with her mother.

That is exactly what happened between my wife, her three sisters, and their mother. My wife's mother was manic or bipolar, we are not sure what, but she pretty much offended and drove away anyone who was around her for any length of time. She refused to get help and would self medicate with alcohol and drugs. Even though she lived close, we would go years without seeing or talking to her. It was her loss mostly but I was/am bothered by it still. At the end of her life her daughters helped provide the hospice care for her as she died of lung cancer. Those few weeks went a long way to helping the daughters reconcile how they felt about their mother and at the same time provide comfort to their mother. It is a shame the mother missed out on so many joys her family would have been willing to share with her.

[_Blixa]

That was an interesting article, Fence Sitter.

It reminded me of an online friend who is a hospice worker and one of the most amazingly emotionally generous people I've heard of. She once wrote about taking care of her own mother in hospice, a woman who she'd had a very problematic relationship with her entire life, and how the "ritual" of giving her the loving care she extends to all her patients helped her to make peace with her mother.

That is exactly what happened between my wife, her three sisters, and their mother. My wife's mother was manic or bipolar, we are not sure what, but she pretty much offended and drove away anyone who was around her for any length of time. She refused to get help and would self medicate with alcohol and drugs. Even though she lived close, we would go years without seeing or talking to her. It was her loss mostly but I was/am bothered by it still. At the end of her life her daughters helped provide the hospice care for her as she died of lung cancer. Those few weeks went a long way to helping the daughters reconcile how they felt about their mother and at the same time provide comfort to their mother. It is a shame the mother missed out on so many joys her family would have been willing to share with her.

I've thought about such a scenario with my own mother, since reading about my hospice-worker friend's experience. It's not hard for me to "emotionally imagine" that such a thing could have the same effect for myself and my siblings. Still, I wish things could be different now, when all of us could be enjoying each other so much more.

I spent the last months of my grandmother's life with her. Her daughter, my mother, would not acknowledge that it was the end. It seemed clear to grandmother that it was and that she had no trouble with it at all. She was clear in her mind about being ready and so I spent many, many happy days with her talking about everything. Her loss is still pretty painful, but that pain is offset by how much we were able to share then because of her own straight-forward acceptance of mortality. I'm sorry my mother couldn't share in that, too, as she was, and I think understandably, in denial about her mother's forthcoming death and doing everything she could to arrange medical intervention (intervention my grandmother didn't want) to keep her living longer.

Truthfully, this does make me somewhat wistful about an afterlife. But I think the weight of this lesson has to lie in the here-and-now more than the here-after.

[_MrStakhanovite]

A great treatment of this takes place in The Death of Ivan Ilyich...

What tormented Ivan Ilyich the most was that no one gave him the kind of compassion he craved. There were moments after long suffering when what he wanted most of all (shameful as it might be for him to admit) was to be pitied like a sick child. He wanted to be caressed, kissed, cried over, as sick children are caressed and comforted. He knew that he was an important functionary with a graying beard, and so this was impossible; yet all the same he longed for it.

[_honorentheos]

Hey FS. I'd just finished reading this via CNN and thought it would make for an interesting thread. It makes sense you already had done so.

The line you quoted is the exact same one I thought jumped off the page at me -

"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."

What's interesting to me is how much this has come to define my own view of religion over the last 5 or so years. I've never been able to feel completely comfortable claiming to be an atheist for reasons related to the above - at some point, the most valuable things I had found in my self and my relationships never went away when I left the church, my perspective on what they meant just changed.

I recently picked up Ehrman's book about the problem of evil and was struck by his view on the meaning of Ecclesiastes. He, as a self-proclaimed agnostic, seemed to feel this author above all captured his remaining view on life/scripture - all is vanity/fleeting, but enjoy the most simple important things while you can. Because in the end this is all there is to it.