27 Jun Hidden Peace

Hidden Peace by Patty Dunn, Hospice Program Coordinator

An EarlyCare client of ours recently died somewhat suddenly and unexpectedly. I will call her Lila. This client was my age, a mother, a seeker, full of curiosity and a longing to face this death-thing head on. As many of us do, she carried a lifetime of family-born hurts and misconceptions about love, life and how she fit into it all. We often delved deeply into philosophical and reality-based conversations about what it meant to live fully, to love, and to face death with the kind of grace we secretly hope will show up for us. More than anything, she possessed a sense of humor, a directness, and a fierce commitment to truth-telling that stunned me with a sharp awakeness when I caught a glimpse of it.  I loved our talks, often filled with hilarious-laughter-kinds-of-tears, some from sorrow and regret, some from daring to see our human shadows and vulnerabilities with a light and loving heart. She was the loveliest kind of force—one I felt lucky to meet. She asked me to help her plan her dying, her death, and its aftermath–in a sense, to be a death planner. I got a kick out of that idea—along with the concept of a death bag—like the bag you pack when you’re preparing for childbirth—but for your death. We wondered what you would pack in it. That got her thinking about her actual death environment: lighting, bedding, music, who she’d want there, where her bed would be, etc. She even planned and implemented her celebration of life, which she insisted she would attend—and she did. As you can imagine, we went a little wild with the possibilities. We often laughed—a lot.

When I got a call from her oncologist that she requested my presence in the ER, I instinctively held my breath. As I practiced slowing down my breathing and feeling my feet on the ground, it slowly dawned on my denial-dependent mind that she was in the midst of a medical crisis from which she might not survive. I was scared–for her and for me. She was still redefining for herself how to live well with her serious illness. I wasn’t prepared to lose my connection with her. I wanted to do right by her. I wanted to offer the kind of wise, loving strength and comfort I would want from someone companioning me at the end. When I entered the room in the ER where she was, the 1^st thing she said was, “but I didn’t want to die in the hospital”. I nodded with understanding (I didn’t want her to die in the hospital either). And I will say, despite the chaos in the ER: the ever-present variety of beeps and alarms; the whooshing machine sounds; the flurry of human activity; the bright fluorescent lights; and that it’s not set up for peoples’ peaceful dying, that small ER room began to feel like a protected sanctuary—a space in which this dying mother/daughter/sister/aunt/neighbor/friend/woman could be held by her tribe. The soft-spoken and surprisingly reverent care the ER staff offered—the quality of their listening to her & to us, and the way they looked at her—all created the sacred space that was her dying room until she was moved upstairs until her death hours later.

There’s one thing that happened, though, that I will carry with me in this hospice care work, and anywhere for that matter, because its truth and simplicity stunned me. I will continue to spread its wisdom by telling and retelling the story. At one point Lila appeared restless in her bed. I asked if she was uncomfortable. She pointed to her stomach while nodding her head. “I’ll let the Dr. know”, I said. When I returned to her room, her hospice volunteer, who I will call Bonnie, moved closer to the head of her bed. She had been reading beautiful, soulful poems she’d brought with her to Lila’s bedside. It seemed to me that they’d shared that kind of beauty before. As Lila restlessly moved her legs and lower body to find a more comfortable position, Bonnie asked, “Lila, is there anywhere that you are experiencing peace?” Lila, looking perplexed, blurted “in my body?” “In your being”, Bonnie whispered. With that, Lila’s whole body visibly appeared to sigh, to settle, to make some sort of deep, internal shift. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but we all noticed it. A few moments later Lila, with her eyes closed and mouth partially smiling, replied, “yes, I am experiencing great peace.” And she was. We could see it. We could feel it. We were all, in that moment, somewhere in that peaceful place that we’re told is always in and around us, if we pay attention. The next day I called Bonnie and marveled at the brilliance of that the question. She asked, “what question?” When I reminded her, she instantly settled into that peaceful place again and said quietly, “oh yea, I forgot about that. I don’t know where that came from. Thanks for reminding me—that makes me feel better about her death.”

We are very familiar with a paradigm that asks, where does it hurt? We are less practiced with asking, where is peace? That question was answered in the Mystery of the present moment we all shared. Don’t ask my mind how I know—it doesn’t. But the experience of peace caught everyone in that moment by awesome and surprising grace. It was a moment worth spreading.