Light Up the Night

On Dec. 1st as the bright, waxing moon looked down on our neighbours St. Joseph’s Hospice of London, a group of special people gathered outside the hospice to celebrate Light Up the Night.

Supporters of hospice, staff and people who had lost loved ones who had spent their last days within those loving walls, gathered to distribute lanterns in memory of their loved ones.  Amid brightly lit candles, a huge lighted LOVE sign, singing and camaraderie, the crowd sipped cocoa and joined in the activities.

Inside hospice, the doors were adorned with paper lanterns highlighted with names of deceased loved ones printed on them.  Some contained messages of love.  We Sisters who live next door to hospice, purchased two lanterns for the celebration.  One, for all the Sisters in our Congregation who have died this past year, and the second for all the women and men who are homeless on our streets and who have died this year.

Sister Ann pictured in the middle, between Hospice staff/volunteers.

 As we mingled with the colorful group, some sporting necklaces of flickering Christmas lights, we became part of a heartwarming event that praises the gift of life and gives thanks for wonderful hospices that provide supportive, compassionate care to those experiencing their final weeks of life.

-Sister Jean Moylan, csj

Call the Midwife

Many people have been taken with the British series, Call the Midwife, which chronicles the experience of a group of Anglican nuns and their protégées in the poorest quarters of London during the 1950’s. Their special gift was to help bring new life into the world with large doses of compassion and savvy that made them realise the causes of poverty.

There is another kind of midwifery that I see every time I volunteer at St. Joseph’s Hospice. As a midwife was called to help usher in life, at Hospice, the staff and volunteers act as midwives as people transition toward death. In our culture, death is often surrounded with fear and the “that about which one does not talk” syndrome. By the very fact that someone has come to hospice, the facts are on the table. Pretence has been replaced by death as a given. That “given” which we all know theoretically, has become stark reality for residents and families at Hospice. Ushered right into the room along with the resident is the possibility of open conversation and a chance for expression of feeling, of hopes, of fears, of curiosity.

Recently during a video, Katherine Dowling Singh who wrote The Grace in Dying, suggested that death is not always pretty but it has the capacity to be beautiful. My experience would bear that out as I am with staff, volunteers, family and residents. Not always pretty. But beauty is another question. The simple beauty of facing truth, of saying things we want to say, of struggling to come to terms with the loss of a future with loved ones, the sadness of relationships gone sideways.

Midwives needed. Indeed, Call the Midwife.

Margo Ritchie CSJ

My Body Knows How to Die

The current debate about redefining euthanasia as a ‘medical aid in dying’ has prompted me to draw from my social work experience with persons in the end-of-life stages and surface the following considerations.

If my life’s path is to take me through death’s portal by a prolonged terminal illness, I can trust my body’s biological wisdom to know how to prepare itself and how to carry through my Creator’s given design. While I am capable of making health care decisions or while I am legally capable of instructing another on my wishes (Living Will), I can make my end of life decisions. I can allow my body to embrace the dying process when being healed is no longer a possibility. Stephen Levine, poet and writer, known for his work on death and dying, captures this concept in asserting that one can choose to allow the body to heal itself into death when healing into life is no longer anticipated.

Medical advances can seek to prolong my life as if life did not have its already determined span. Loved ones might want to use all available means to keep me physically among them. However, when the time for me to die has come, I believe my body will know. It will gradually signal its inability to take in food or liquid or to even breathe. Lack of food or liquid in a terminal phase is not painful for the body. Breathing can be eased with oxygen.

"It is important to remember that as the physical body is dying, the vital organs are shutting down, and nourishment is no longer required to keep them functioning. This is the wisdom of dying, and the body knows exactly what to do." (Hawaii's Hospice and Palliative Care Organization)

One might consider doing violence to life’s natural processes by asking another person to end one’s life because the anticipated pain associated with terminal illness is unbearable. Not just the physical pain but the encompassing pain that is physical, spiritual, mental, and emotional. Individuals might mistakenly want to be euthanized, to have another end their lives, unaware that death will occur naturally by simply allowing the body to shut down in its own way. 

What I actually need from medical professionals and my loved ones is not to do violence to my dying process by ending my life, by euthanizing me, but to help me bear well with the manifestations of pain through appropriate pain management and attention to my physical, spiritual, emotional status. I need to know with certainty that appropriate pain management and the best palliative care will be in place for me as well as everyone else, just as they are right now for a number of people, albeit a fortunate few.[1]

If I happen to be demented at the end of my life, my hope remains the same. However, I know that some will question my quality of life. What if simply being alive until the natural end of my days is quality of life for me?

Should not the debate be about the provision of the best palliative care for everyone rather than about a law that would redefine euthanasia as medical aid?

Nicole Aubé CSJ

Note:

[1] The Canadian Hospice Palliative Care Association in its May 2010 Fact Sheet states that 16%-30%  of Canadians who die [depending on where they reside]have access to or receive hospice palliative and end of life care. Canada ranks ninth in an international “Quality of Death” index released July 14, 2010.

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