Hospice World

Covid has been around for a while now.  As the days, weeks and months go on, people are getting tired of it all.  This is true even for those who may not have been tested positive or know anyone personally who has been affected.  For those folks who have been sick, life has been worse.  And of course, for the families of ones who have died from the disease, life will never be the same.  

When it all began, no one really knew what was in store for us.  At first, it seemed like a distant threat.  I remember reading about Wuhan and never even thought about it coming to affect my life.  And then, it got worse.  And then the earliest news came out of Seattle, as I recall.  And then New York City was dealing with big numbers and Covid began to dominate the headlines of the news.  At that point, we knew it was a matter of time.  

Recently, I heard an interview by some guy whom I did not know and can’t now recall his name.  He was not a hermit in the forest somewhere, but he had decided early on, he was not going to watch the news and obsess over all the dire stuff that was happening and might happen.  As I listened to him, I realized some would call him a crackpot---crazy as a loon.  But I am not so sure.  Maybe he is the sane one!  It is not the way I chose to go, but I can understand his position.  It made me wonder whether all the news I read and hear has made any difference in my life?  I suspect it has affected me, but I have not reflected on how it might have done so.

Some things I read are helpful, I think.  For example, I read a little piece by a hospital chaplain, Kerry Egan.  I don’t know Egan, but I learned she is a graduate of Harvard Divinity School---my alma mater---and is a mother and writer.  She wrote a little piece on being a caregiver in a hospice setting, which is something I have done quite a bit.  I was eager to see what she said.  I always hope to learn a thing or two from someone else’s experience.  

She talked about being with people---some of whom were suffering from Covid.  However, it was her words to those of us not directly suffering from the disease that caught my attention.  Perhaps it is luck.  But what she says stuck with me.  She says that “while you may not be at the end of your life or on hospice care right now, we are all currently living in a hospice world.”  I was fascinated with the idea that we are living in a hospice world.  I know a bit about that world.

Both my dad and mom died in the care of hospice.  My dad died in his living room and my mom died in my living room.  In both cases family surrounded them and had given them special care for months.  We knew we were with them to the end.  And we were confident we knew where that end would happen, if not when it would happen.  For me the word, care, is the most important word that goes with hospice.  In the hospice world two things are certain: there will be an imminent death and there will be care until that death happens.  

I wondered whether this is what Egan meant by claiming we are living in a hospice world?  Listen to what she tells us.  “By hospice world I mean simply this: a community in which death is daily before our eyes. A hospice world is a world in which we are all acutely aware of our own and each others' mortality.”  With this definition we clearly are in a hospice world.  You do have to be a hermit to avoid the fact that death is daily before our eyes.  In the stretch of some days, more than 2,000 Americans were daily dying of Covid.  So much death is bound to make all of us a little more conscious of our own mortality.

If this is true, as I believe it is, then does that mean life has become morbid?  No, life does not necessarily become morbid, nor do we have to live in fear.  This is where the spiritual dimension enters the picture for me.  Spirituality is the way of life I was living pre-Covid times and will be my way of life post-Covid---or until death do me part.  To be spiritual does not mean I deny the reality of my own mortality, nor does it mean I resign myself to some morbid view of life.  To be spiritual means to learn to live, not learn to die.  It means I accept death as part of the life process.  

I once read---maybe it was Parker Palmer---that the real question for us should not be whether we are scared of death?  Rather, it should be whether we are scared of living before we die?  Death is not the tragedy.  Failing to live is the real tragedy for so many.  My goal is to live before I die.  Right now this life is happening in Covid time.  When the vaccine is available, I will let them jab it into my arm.  Then I will continue to live well before I die.  

My mortality is a given.  That was true even before Covid.  In that sense we are born into a hospice world.  That cynically could be seen as being born with a death sentence.  But I prefer to understand it as a “life question.”  Death is the given; life is the choice.  The hospice question is how to we care and live before we die?  That is true when we are not even officially in a hospice program.  For me Jesus is one who showed my what choosing real life looks like.

It looks something like living for love, working for justice and building community.  That is life in a hospice world.