When the End is Near

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In two impersonal, sterile hospital rooms two separate families gather to keep vigil, to say good-bye.

Previously the doctors have had the hard conversations - the loved one is no longer responding to treatment and the prognosis is grim.

The patient and his or her family too have difficult decisions to make, hard conversations to hold. Words must make their way past a lump that forms in the throat, around sadness that breaks the heart, through tears that glisten in eyes and spill down cheeks, and finally formulate in a brain dazed by shock. These conversations require great courage.

The two families keeping vigil had these hard conversations. One family chose to deny the reality of their loved one's situation. The other family chose to let go. The patient chose to let go of this life and his family chose to let him go.

Letting go of this life and of a loved one is a heart-wrenching decision and it can also be an immense gift of love.

The family who denied reality and rejected the option of palliative care, of hospice care watched their mother, wife, and grandmother die painfully. Her death was a traumatic event both for her and for her family.

The family who chose to let go also chose hospice care. Hospice focuses on palliative care--keeping the person comfortable through the dying process. Hospice is not about heroic efforts to extend life, but about helping a person to die peacefully and helping a family to cope with the heart-rending loss of their loved one.

For many there comes a point when the doctors and other medical professionals have exhausted their options, when the treatments have failed. At this difficult moment in life, the choice becomes how to let go, how to face death. Hospice care, palliative care can help families make this difficult transition with support, care, and comfort.

A Foursome . . . And Then There Was One

For nearly 70 years the two couples were friends, family, a foursome knit together by common experience, by love, by friendship, by blood.

The two men, brothers, were born just 11 1/2 months apart. Arlyn, the older of the two was a sickly child. Although the two boys started school one year after the other, because of Arlyn's illnesses they were soon in the same class and remained so until they graduated from high school.

The girls, Dorothy and Jessie, met and became friends in 7th grade when Dorothy came to the "central school" in town from her one room country school. While in high school, the two girls worked together one summer in a laundry. They walked many--MANY--blocks from the house where they boarded with Dorothy's aunt and uncle to the laundry. On the way to and from work, they passed a Catholic church. The unfamiliar sound of the nuns chanting morning prayers unsettled them a little. At the laundry they each had their own set of duties, one ran a mangle that pressed the sheets and the other ironed uniforms.

High school passed quickly and graduation was before them. At their class night before graduation, they did a skit that showed Arlyn married to Dorothy and Floyd married to Jessie and living in a duplex. The skit proved to be a self-fulling prophecy. Floyd and Jessie married first and moved into half a house owned by his parents. When Arlyn and Dorothy married a few months later, they moved into the other half of the house.

While they were sharing the house, the two couples continued their friendship. Both women were pregnant during this season. Jessie gave birth to a son and later Dorothy to a daughter. They crocheted together, visited, and helped each other through the early days of marriage. Each couple created a home side by side with the other to care for their budding families. However, after a few short months their paths took different turns.

Arlyn worked on the family farm and Floyd and Jessie went to Bible school in preparation to go to India as missionaries. Although separated by many miles and different life experiences, when Floyd and Jessie returned from India, they settled again in the same small town where they were born. The two couples continued their long time friendship.

For about 2 weeks each year all four were the same age. Floyd was the youngest of the four and Arlyn was the oldest. Between Floyd's birthday and Arlyn's birthday all four would be the same age, then Arlyn would turn a year older and it would be another 11 and 1/2 months before they were all the same age again.

Life was busy with raising children and building their businesses. Grandchildren came along. The blessings and the hardships of life happened.

In their declining years the two women often talked on the phone about mutual interests and the men worked together to track their church's finances. When the Arlyn reached the end of his life, Floyd visited him often during the week he was in the hospital. Unable to drive that far, Floyd's son brought him faithfully. After Arlyn came home to be cared for by hospice and his children, Floyd and Jessie continued to visit, once bringing a yummy rotisserie chicken for Arlyn's family for supper.

As Dorothy faced the grief and loneliness of widowhood, Jessie called her with encouraging words and the comfort of her friendship until Jessie's voice became too weak to be heard over the telephone lines.

Now only one of this foursome remains. Arlyn, Jessie, and Floyd have been welcomed to their heavenly home, rejoicing to be with their Savior, rejoicing to be reunited with their loved ones. Dorothy remains, longing for her husband especially, missing the other dear ones who've gone before. One day the foursome will be reunited and together they will worship the Savior they loved all their lives long. Until then, Dorothy's family cherishes the days and hours they have with her.

Yeah, Though I Walk: Why? (My Missionary Cousin)

I stood in a room filled with books at the Seminario Teologico Bautista in Lima, Peru. The building was simple and dedicated to training young men for the ministry. Before me was a memorial plaque dedicating a section of the books to My Missionary Cousin.  A few days earlier I had listened to a group of missionaries telling their stories and several of them mentioned My Missionary Cousin. They had known him and had planned to minister shoulder to shoulder with him and his family.

In 1977, ten years before I stood in that small library and sat in that living room in Lima listening to missionary stories, My Missionary Cousin and his family left for language school in Mexico. They were to learn Spanish to prepare to serve in Peru. They had only been there a short time before it became apparent that something was wrong. He was diagnosed with ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) also known as Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Over the course of the next 5 years his condition deteriorated and he passed away in May of 1982 during my senior year of high school.

As I listened to the missionaries’ stories, I thought about My Missionary Cousin. He loved God. He loved Peru, the Peruvians, but he never made it back. He loved his wife and 3 young sons. But he had to leave all of that behind in a long torturous death. The tears rolled down my cheeks and I could not hold them back. He was part of the inspiration that led me to Peru as a Summer Missionary Apprentice that year. I was there, but he was not.

After his death I began to ask “Why?” When My Uncle died, I was too young to ask.  Perhaps I was still too young to ask at 12 when My Pastor’s Son died. However, at this point in my life I was beginning to question not only My Missionary Cousin’s death, but also why My Uncle and My Pastor’s Son had to die. All of them loved God, were serving Him, and yet they died. Their loved ones experienced this horrible loss and grief. It seemed so very unfair. I wondered why and somewhere deep in my heart began a stirring doubt about what kind of God would do this.

"Why" is a normal question when facing grief. 

How are you or how have you worked through that question?

Where We Belong

The sun was hot outside in the Belizean sky. Inside the small room was filled with faces of varying hues from milky white to golden brown. The air was close and in the center of the room a wizened old man lay dying. The tall, blonde pastor spoke reassuringly to the dying man through an interpreter. Talking with him about eternity and the God that he would soon meet. The wrinkled old man curled in a ball in his hammock indicated that he wanted assurance that he was okay to meet this God. The pastor explained truths about life and knowing God through Christ. Then together we prayed for and with the old man.

For that brief sojourn in a crowded, hot, and heavily scented room I knew that we were exactly where we belonged on that day and at that time. We had helped a dying man to experience peace and assurance in his final days.