It Matters
On Monday, one of our hospice patients died at a nursing home. I went to the facility to comfort the family and the staff who were involved in the patient's care. While waiting for the spouse to sure up arrangements with a funeral home (this was a new patient who died before we could help the family make arrangements), I struck up a conversation with the social worker at the nursing home. She told me she had never really seen a dead person before (it is odd that someone in her mid-to-late 20's has never encountered death before), but she made herself go into the patient's room and observe the body. Being the good chaplain I am, I asked her what that experience was like for her. She said seeing the body had a profound effect on her. She was struck by the finality of death, that there was no semblance of life whatsoever in that patient's room. She talked about how different the body looks when there is no life in it. Then she said something that made my heart sink. She said her experience staring death in the face for the first time made her feel that everything we hold dear in this life just doesn't matter. The people we love, the experiences we have in this life mean nothing against the finality of death, she said. It really made her question the entire point and purpose of life.
The life-affirming chaplain in me (as opposed to my cynical, nihilist shadow side) responded that maybe the reality of death makes everything in this life mean so much more. Maybe the fact that we know that life is fleeting, here one second and gone the next, should make us soak up every second, every breath that we have. Whether you believe that death is the final end or if you believe in an afterlife (I like to think I believe there is something after this...at least most of the time), I hope you can see that this life matters and it matters a lot. My patients teach me many things, but the most important lesson I have learned as a hospice chaplain is that every breath we breathe is a gift. I hope I always remember that.
