Working Toward a Peaceful Death

I had the privilege of spending a few weeks with my neighbor who was on hospice with a cancer diagnosis. By the time I started regular visits he was bedbound and could not talk. He would write feverishly in his notebook, and I would ask questions. We spent time in silence, just being present with each other. He shared his thoughts on death and the afterlife. He also shared some regrets from life. He was still holding onto some shame and guilt concerning his service in the Vietnam War. And you could visibly see the toll it was taking on him. Tears flowed freely as we talked about forgiveness, especially the hard work of forgiving ourselves. In those few, short weeks, I witnessed something shift in him. It was as if his distress, his sorrow, began to lift and peace began to settle in. I’d like to believe Mark did forgive himself. Though I will never know for sure, he did die peacefully.

Sending Off

We enjoyed near-weekly visits for almost 10 months. She was 95 when we met, turned 96 and lived a bit longer still. She would make jewelry, care for her plants, feed the birds, crochet, do jigsaw puzzles. And she loved to share these activities with me. While our hands were busy she would often share stories of her family. She constantly told me how much she loved being a wife and especially a mom. She was a woman of many talents and had decades of stories to share. She had clearly done some hard emotional and spiritual work over the years to be so free and so vulnerable to share so freely. In her last weeks she started to verbalize that she was ready to die. During our last visit this is the Send Off Prayer I shared with her: