First Hospice Experience

For the first time I put on my Mission Hospice Volunteer badge and sat with someone who was actively dying. She was in her nineties dying from cancer. Her family had requested volunteers sit with her around the clock and I was part of the vigil. I only had one hour after work. That hour changed my life.

Her breathing was labored. Her heart raced. Her body was unusually warm, like she had a fever. She was unresponsive. Her eyes and lips hung slightly open.

I spoke to her, talking about politics, my life, the pictures on her walls. I read to her from the Book of Common Prayer. At one point, she made a sound, almost like a syllable; it was after I had finished reading this prayer:

O God, whose mercies cannot be numbered: Accept our
prayers on behalf of thy servant N., and grant him an
entrance into the land of light and joy, in the fellowship of
thy saints; through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord, who liveth
and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now
and for ever. Amen.

The rest of the time she said nothing. 

I sat and watched her breathing, recognizing that she was nearing the very last moments of her life and feeling deeply honored to be present to her and her family. It was sacred space. I felt the truth of what I'd learned in volunteer training - that my role was simply to be a compassionate, non-anxious presence, nothing more. It's amazing how hard that can be!

I found myself thinking about my worries as I watched her breathe. They seemed to pale in comparison to what she was experiencing, what I would experience one day, what we all will. Even if our death looks much different from this one, we will all pass the threshold from this life to the next. And then will it matter how many calories we ate? How we looked in the photos? How we're insecure about certain people or situations?

It's not that those things don't matter. It's just that when you get to the end of your life, you're not going to want to have spent a lot of your precious time here perseverating about such things. You'll want to have worked for social change, volunteered to help someone's life be better, learned how to love your loved ones more skillfully, forgiven people, let go of grudges and burdens. 

Our culture does a good job of distracting us from what really matters. It tells us that makeup, brand-name clothes, shoes, purses, luxury cars, celebrities, sports teams, video games, television, movies, looking good on social media, having possessions that scream status - it tells us that these are the things that matter. But they're not. They are just distractions from real life. Real life is children, animals, people, nature. Real life is working on yourself so you're a little bit less of an asshole, a bit more compassionate, a bit more patient and understanding. 


Dying itself is a job in itself. It's hard work. I could see that as my patient lay there, breathing more slowly each time. She's not thinking about any of this stuff now. She's just waiting for her body to cease operations. She's shutting down programs, logging off. It's hard for the body to cease all the functions that have sustained it over the last century. It's not used to stopping its heart and breathing. The body is working to maintain function. It's still a process, this learning to let go, even to the very end.