DEATH AS A HEALING PROCESS

A talk I gave August 8, 1992 to some 200 persons. Sponsored by the Office of Elderly Affairs, County of Kauai. These persons were all care-givers.

You know the mind is an amazing thing: it starts working the minute you are born and only stops when you get up to make a speech.

Some time ago, the president of a large insurance company invited me to give a talk on the subject of death and dying. He asked me for a topic and without much hesitation I said, how about "Death as a Healing Process." There was a long silence and when he finally spoke, he said, "Wow, when I think of death, I always think of a great loss, a big tragedy. So when you said, ‘death as a healing process,’ for a moment you lost me." And I replied, "You weren’t lost, you just need direction."

Then, I told him this story. It’s a story about a traveler who was convinced that he was on the wrong road. So he came to a halt in a village. Calling one of the villagers to the car window, he said, "Friend, I need help, I’m lost." The villager looked at him for a moment, "Do you know where you are?" he asked. "Yes," the traveler replied and named his destination. The villager looked away for a moment, "You ain’t lost," he said at last, "You just need directions."

Emotionally speaking, many of us are in the position of the traveler, in relation to death. We know where we are: fearful sometimes, grieved, filled with sense of loss. And we know where we want to be — at peace, liberated from our fears and anxiety. Like the traveler, we are not permanently lost. We need a sense of direction.

I want to share with you a sense of direction which may enable all of us to experience death as a healing process.

Five Points

I’m going to cover five points:

To experience death as the important key to self-understanding
In dying, time is experienced as Now, the present, instead of past/future
Dying teaches us how to accept with gratitude things that are being done to us the dying. But most important, dying teaches us how to wait.
Death/dying creates a special community — a community that heals
Finally, dying creates in us a special knowing: that love is stronger than death.

The First Point: Death as the key to self-understanding

Many of us will experience dying as a very important key to self-understanding. Death will reveal to many of us the person we can really become, for:

death can put us in touch with our deepest feelings
it can help us concentrate on what is most important and essential in our lives
it can help us find meaning in life

I think of a very successful business executive who went to see a doctor because he had difficult breathing. After many tests, he was told that cancer had spread throughout his whole body. And when he asked the doctor, "What are my chances?" the doctor replied "Anywhere from three to six months."

When he invited me to work with him, he had already:

given up his business
his two sons had left the mainland colleges to be with him
his daughter was experiencing great confusion
and his wife had relinquished all her community services

One evening, he invited me to have dinner with the family. There was much laughter and joy. After dinner, we went into the living room and there, the great illumination took place. This is what happened. The father went to each of his children, called them by name and told each one of them, "I love you."

This person-to-person declaration of love enabled each of his children to be free:

free to be themselves
free to express their deepest feelings for each other
free to become the family they were meant to be

You remember Lee Atwater whose mean-spirited tactics helped put George Bush in the White House? He was responsible for the creation of Willie Horton, the black prisoner. Lee Atwater linked Willie Horton to the image of Dukakis’ philosophy of being soft and liberal on crime. Shortly before his death, he considered his win-at-any-cost political philosophy.

He wrote: "Long before I was struck with cancer, I felt something stirring in American society. It was a sense among the people of the country — Republicans and Democrats alike — that something was missing from their lives — something crucial. But I wasn’t exactly sure what it was. My illness helped me to see what was missing in society is what was missing in me: a little heart, a lot of brotherhood.

"The 80s were about acquiring — acquiring wealth, power, prestige. I know. I acquired more wealth, power, and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. What power wouldn’t I trade for a little more time with my family? What price wouldn’t I pay for an evening with friends? It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime. I don’t know who will lead us through the 90s, but they must be made to speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul.

"I’ve come a long way since the day I told George Bush that his "kinder, gentler" theme was a nice thought but it wouldn’t win us any votes. I used to say that the president might be kinder and gentler, but I wasn’t going to be. How wrong I was. There is nothing more important in life than human beings, nothing sweeter than the human touch."

The Second Point: the Now — the Present

Dying and death becomes a healing process because death transforms our experience of time. We think that past and future really exists. We live our life as though it truly exists. But for a dying person, what is important is not the past with all its joys, its achievements, its regrets — nor is it the future with all its promises and fulfillments. What is real, what is important is the Now — the Present. I am dying now.

We all carry around in us an image of ourselves that we create then struggle to maintain. To carry around an image of ourselves is a great burden, causing a strain or tension between what we actually are in the moment and the image we’re trying to project.

Once there were two monks traveling and saw a woman in distress. She had no means of crossing a stream. So the first monk approaches her, and with her consent carries her and wades across the stream. He releases her and continues on his way. But the second monk began to harass his friend. "You know, in our way of life, we are not allowed to touch a woman. You violated one of our rules." Throughout the day, the second monk kept harassing his friend. Finally, the first monk turned to his friend and said, "I released the woman early this morning. Why are you still carrying her?"

Dying helps us to live in the moment. When I live in the moment, something remarkable happens. Suddenly, I realize that there’s nothing to be, nothing to do, nothing to have. There’s nothing special to be, nothing special to do, nothing special to have. Having nothing — we’ve got nothing to lose. When we have nothing, we can be anything. For one thing, we can let go of our self-image.

I have found a very interesting phenomenon about dying persons. When they can be anything, they usually want to share their sense of humor. There’s this story of Norman Cousins. When he was in the hospital, his wife used to bring all kinds of food, especially the apple juice Mr. Cousins relished. In this hospital, there was a nurse who was one of those "we-nurses" — always saying, "How are we doing today?" When she gave him the urinal cup, she would say, "We shall fill it up now." And Mr. Cousins would say, "You do it first." One day he filled the urinal cup with his favorite apple juice. When the nurse came to pick it up, she held it up and said, "It has an unusual color today." Whereupon Mr. Cousins, took the cup and drank it saying, "Maybe the second time around it can become clearer."

When John was gravely ill, a friend visited him and said, "John, you look well, your appearance is good." John smiled weakly. "Ah, Ted" he replied, "it’s not my appearance that concerns me now, but rather my disappearance."

When we live in the moment, we can begin to see the humor in our lives.

The Third Point: Accept with gratitude what others do for us

You remember the businessman who looked at each of his children and said, "I love you." Well, Robert — that was his name, had an enormous problem, even as he was dying. This is how he stated his problem:

"All my life, I have lived to do things for people, for business, for my community. And now, here I am, unable to do anything for myself, for others. I can’t even go to the bathroom without some help. Please help me to understand my situation in a new way."

In our world, there is this strong desire:

to accomplish something
to be successful
to gain some sort of achievements

But note what accomplishing something leads to: we become our success. We not only desire to be and to do many creative things. But we often make the results of our work the criteria of our self-esteem. We become our successes. In short, we are worthwhile because we have successes. In this success-oriented world, our lives become more and more dominated by superlatives. We brag about the highest building, fastest runner, most home runs. And the result? We become like the husband who climbed the highest mountain, fought the fiercest tiger, swam the roughest sea — all to impress his wife. When he arrived home from his conquests, he found a note at home. It was from his wife. She wrote, "I’m leaving you — you’re never at home."

What Robert learned. He accepted the fact that he had become the one to whom things are being done. He is being fed; he is being drugged; he is being told what to do. Things are being done to him over which he has no control. He is now the recipient of other people’s initiatives.

Robert had finally learned how to receive. So one day, he said to me, "I can now allow things to be done to me — people can bathe me, change my clothes, feed me . . . with gratitude." He had finally learned to receive, to be open to others — with gratitude and grace.

There was a second learning which for Robert was the greater learning. He learned how to wait. Waiting is not a very popular attitude. Waiting is not something that people think about with great sympathy. In fact, most people consider waiting a waste of time. Perhaps this is because the culture in which we live is basically saying: "Get going. Do something. Don’t just sit there and wait."

What did Robert learn in his waiting? That death is a significant part of life. That dying is the last experience of life itself. I told Robert of Lord Peterson, when his doctor told him he was dying, replied, "Die, my dear doctor. That’s the last thing I shall do."

I also told Robert about graffiti found in Southern California: "Death’s the greatest kick of all, that’s why they save it till last."

So Robert made the decisive decision to accept death — to choose to die. The moment he chose to die, his waiting had a sense of promise. In the words of Henri Nouwen, "his decision had become a seed he had planted. And now in his waiting he was eagerly waiting to see the seed turn into a flower. He knew now that something hidden will be manifested." "Unless a grain falls on the ground and dies, it remains only a single grain, but if it dies, it yields a rich harvest." (John 12:24)

The Fourth Point: A special community

Those who take their death and make of it a healing process create a special community. Notice what happens in this community:

conflicts never last long
tensions are talked out
disagreements are resolved

Because of the dying:

there is always someone at home
moments of silence and quiet
always words of affection, gentleness and tenderness
patience and endurance
smiles and tears visible to all
space for mutual forgiveness and healing

In this community:

we do not seek competition, conflicts, individual stardom
there are no refugee camps, overcrowded prisons
no violence, no crimes
no people sleeping in the streets

We are a community of people who are simply being present to each other.

Conclusion: Befriend death

In conclusion I want to say this: in order to let death become a healing process, we must first of all befriend death; let death become a friend.

We are inclined to avoid, deny, suppress the painful side of life, a tendency that always leads to physical, mental or spiritual disaster. I have a deep sense that if we could really befriend death, we would be a free people. So many of our doubts and hesitations, insecurities, are bound up with our deep-seated fear of death. Our lives would be significantly different if we could relate to death as a familiar guest instead of a threatening stranger.

But how do we befriend death? Beside the four points I shared with you, let me lift up the final and perhaps the most important way of befriending death: it is love — deep human love is stronger than death.

Love is stronger than death. It creates something new out of the destruction caused by death. It bears everything and overcomes everything. It is at work where the power of death is strong — in the frail body of a person stricken by terminal illness.

Love does not seek to abolish death. Rather, love dares to accept death into its own bosom. Love willingly enters the grave and is witness to its power of resurrection.

Love rescues life from death. It rescues each of us, for love is stronger than death.