—
The phone rang at one in the morning.
It was him. I wasn’t surprised.
I sleep deeply and wake fast. Moments after the call, I was dressed. In less than fifteen minutes, I arrived at their home and stood beside their bed.
The husband wept. I’d never seen him cry before.
His wife lay beneath the sheets. In repose, eyes closed, you could (almost) pretend she was blissfully slumbering. But she was dead.
Later I’d recall Charles Dickens’ familiar Tale of Two Cities opening, “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” Aren’t those the extremes for most late-night calls? Why else would someone phone in the wee small hours, except to convey the best news about a child’s birth or a beloved’s safe arrival home from a battlefield half-a-world away?
Or to share the worst news.
The odds of a jangling phone conveying the “worst” message was high. Back then, I was an on-call chaplain for a hospice. Most nights remained calm, but any moment could be disrupted.
And death always seems a disruption.
It would take another half-hour for the nurse to arrive and confirm what a weeping, stunned husband and I had known since before I entered their bedroom. His wife had died in what many would claim was the best way: in her sleep, in her bed, in her home. It also hadn’t been that long since they were able to walk around the neighborhood. Just a slow block or two, but it had been outside and holding hands. They’d even, several days before, shared lunch at the kitchen table while I visited. It wasn’t much of a meal. She’d nibbled applesauce and sipped water, he’d left an untouched sandwich on his plate. Still, they were together, around that old wooden table of scratches and memories.
Now, not together.
Their hospice team—nurses, social worker, home health aides, and me—had tried to prepare them for death. Some don’t like to discuss death, but they were okay with honest conversations. Some fixate on any research touting a new miracle drug for the specific cancer a loved one has, but this couple was realistic. Some have kids who bicker about Mom having another surgery or Dad going to a memory care facility. But their adult kids were kind and thoughtful.
You see, they’d had Dickens’ “best of times.”
And yet he was devastated by her death.
He wept tears I’d never seen before. In prior visits, we had prayed. We also had awkward silences and spontaneous laughter. He shared treasured family stories and his wife, probably even quiet before the cancer, smiled and rolled her eyes at his exaggerations.
Hospice did everything to help them understand the dying that would lead to death.
He wasn’t prepared.
In that bedroom, in that dimly lit house, long before dawn, he was a wreck.
How can you not be?
—
People dread the “H” word. Hospice, a word firmly rooted in a history of compassion and safety, has an awful reputation. It’s far worse than any of the late comedian George Carlin’s seven words you once couldn’t say on television. Hospice is often described as the literal dead-end, the giving-up, and the nothing-else-we-can-do. It’s not a Plan B when Plan A doesn’t succeed. It’s not even Plan C or D. It’s Plan H.
It’s the blank screen after the movie credits have finished.
No! There’s another “H” word that makes life so complicated: being human. Humans, for all of our twenty-first century bravado and progress, continue to fear, avoid, or ignore dying and death.
I don’t know how I’ll face my death. As an aging Baby Boomer, I’m a day or a decade away from dying. But isn’t that true for everyone? Nature and nurture, good or bad lifestyle choices, how much nasty ice cream or nutritious fresh fruit I’ve eaten, and where I live, can all lead to a statistical projection of life expectancy. But isn’t right now, right here my only guarantee of still breathing on this glorious green and blue planet? Death plays no favorites. Death treats celebrities and royalty the same as the old guy collecting retirement or the young woman starting her first job.
However, even when a physician tells rational, reasonable “me” that there are six months or less to live, and “I” should consider hospice, every “I” just wants more tomorrows.
—
The husband and I waited for the hospice nurse in the bedroom. I was there when the funeral home came for the body of his beloved wife of more than a half-century.
We in hospice did our best to prepare them for this time. But no one is ever ready. They were a supportive, loving couple. But then one takes a final breath and the other can’t imagine how to keep breathing.
Hospice, and the research confirms this, will improve life expectancy when there is an “early referral.” Most people, when confronting a grave illness, are realistic enough to know they may not have years and years left. But I’ll bet most would say they hope to have a little more time with a parent or spouse or child. Hospice may be able to provide those extra days, extra meals, extra conversations.
However, the old “H” word, being human, looms as an obstacle. Going from seeking any “cure” to embracing “comfort care” is a tectonic shift.
I won’t conclude these thoughts with sugarcoated promises. Choosing hospice is hard. A good hospice staff will try to prepare families, but that doesn’t mean the tears and fears will cease. But I hope it does mean, as much as possible, that a patient and family won’t be alone in this journey.
The phone rang at one in the morning . . .
—
Previously published here and reprinted with the author’s permission.
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