At the beginning of
my practicum for pastoral counselling, I was assigned two residents to visit
regularly – once a week on Thursdays in a private Long Term Care facility. I would spend the morning with one and the
afternoon with the other. My morning
was spent with Fern, an 80 year-old amputee.
She had in mid-life, worked as an executive assistant to a professor at
a university and had, while there taken the opportunity to study things that
interested her – such as Chinese civilization.
Her husband, with whom she shared her room, had been an
aeronautical engineer. Before entering
the Home, they had spent the winters of their retirement years in Phoenix
Arizona, where they took an interest in the indigenous aboriginal culture and
customs. Her husband had taken up making
jewelry from local gemstones. Sadly, he now
had severe dementia and was bedridden much of the time. Fern cared for him faithfully.
Fern had prosthetics which she would wear sometimes. Otherwise, she would pull herself from the
bed to a wheelchair and navigate the halls quite well by herself. She had a great sense of humour and a wisdom
developed from life experience which often led me to believe that we could
switch roles – I was learning from her more than she was gaining from me. We developed a relationship that was warm,
interesting and mutually enriching. I
dug deep to find out as much as I could about her to help nurture her
interests. She had been fond of writing
poetry – something she had stopped doing for a long time – but which re-emerged
when it was encouraged. I brought art supplies
and we spent time in the sunroom, drawing, painting and chatting. She ran by me many of her theological doubts
and concerns, trying to reconcile her early upbringing in the Christian faith
with what she had learned over a lifetime – learning about the Chinese civilization,
the aboriginals in Arizona.
In the third year of my visits with her, her
husband’s health began to fail rapidly and was dying. Fern sat vigil with him, staying by his
bedside until she was no longer able to stay awake. It was between visits that he died and the
chaplain from the Home called me to tell me that there was a viewing at the
funeral home, if I wanted to pay my respects.
Concerned about how Fern might be feeling, I sought her out as soon as I
entered the funeral parlour. Surrounded
by friends and family, she seemed well, even radiant. When I approached her to offer my
condolences, she said “You should have been there! It was amazing! The whole experience felt like he was giving
birth – I felt like I was giving birth!
I haven’t felt like this since I gave birth to my children!” The awe
with which she expressed this was so palpable that I realized it was I who was
more emotionally distraught than she was.
She embraced the experience as a process of birth. This was not an intellectual metaphor for her
but a genuine living encounter. I have
since then, been able to still my own emotional response to death and dying to be
open to the sense of awe and wonder during this most significant passage – the transition
of the spirit from its bodily imprisonment to its new birth. From the B’hai writings,
translated from the Persian:
In the time of sleep, this body is as though dead;
it does not see nor hear; it does not feel;
it has no consciousness, no perception –
that is to say, the powers of man have become inactive, but
the spirit lives and subsists.
Nay, its penetration is increased, its flight is higher, and
its intelligence is greater.
To consider that after the death of the body the spirit
perishes
is like imagining
that a bird in a cage will be destroyed if the cage is broken,
though the bird has nothing to fear from the destruction of
the cage.
Our body is like the
cage and the spirit is like the bird.
We see that without the cage this bird flies in the world of
sleep;
therefore if the cage
becomes broken, the bird will continue and exist.
Its feelings will be even more powerful, its perceptions
greater, and its happiness increased.
In truth, from hell it reaches a paradise of delights
because for the thankful birds
there is no paradise greater than freedom from the cage.
