and our days on earth are but a shadow.”
Job 8:9
This week’s blog post is dedicated to my very dear friend and professional colleague, Patsy Colson. Much continued Grace, Mercy, and Peace to you and your household as you continue your tremendous fight of Faith in your courageous battle with cancer.
I have not yet done the research yet I am pretty sure that there are literally millions of books, articles, blogs, films, and conversations that advise us and encourage us on “How To Live a Good Life!”
The purpose of today’s blog post is to communicate the important ways in which each of us may learn just “How to Have a Good Death!”
“A free man thinks of nothing less than of death,
and his wisdom is a meditation upon life,
not upon death.”
Baruch Spinoza, 1930
A Good Death
In the book, “Suffering With Dignity”: The Pathway to Ultimate Shalom, the author list eight life events that produce our greatest fears. He list includes losing one’ freedom, the unknown, pain, disappointment, misery, loneliness failure and finally death. https://www.amazon.com/dp/1478757078
Death, and the diseases/sickness that contribute to death, often constitutes our greatest fears as human beings. This is usually confirmed by our discomfort in having healthy conversations about death and dying.
While many of us will not deny the inescapably of sickness and death, death is all around us. For those who are inclined toward spirituality as an impetus for understanding and overcoming this fear, as it is with those who are non-spiritual, both tend to rely heavily upon both science and the medical professional communities to provide answers and solutions to issues associated with death and dying. In reality, an effective merger of our faith, beliefs, family structure, and the medical community are essential in assisting us all in our time of need.
In the book Being Mortal: Illness, Medicine and What Matter in the End, Atul Gawande describes the ‘hard conversations’ the dying and the living need to have, so that the dying person can exercise maximum feasible choice about how they spend their last weeks, days and hours. https://hospicegiving.org/2018/10/22/recommended-reading-being-mortal-by-atul-gawande/?gclid=CjwKCAjw_YPnBRBREiwAIP6TJyVVKJ4QfML4zqIXuM6ZpK6Xr74NPWFuS2lVQypssmdtjmHKh2xbYBoC-_oQAvD_BwE
Medicine has become heroically addicted to prolonging life at all cost, disabling everyone’s ability to weigh the balance between longevity and quality of life in the final phases of living. Assisted living is far harder that assisted death, writes Gawande, but its possibilities are far greater as well. Our ultimate goal, after all, is not a good death but a good life to the very end. (2014, p.245)
The hospice and palliative care movement in the country and globally, have positively transformed our social capacity to rethink about dying and death as a part of life while creating newer circumstances in which we may actually be able to experience a better way to die.
As a matter of an unofficial list on what constitutes a Good Death, patients are:
*kept as physically comfortable as possible,
*being free from pain,
*having things settled with the family,
*remaining at peace spiritually,
*learning how to say terminate to those whom you love during one’s transition,
*maintaining dignity throughout the process,
*avoiding extended life machines,
and *avoiding being a burden on loved ones.
I intentionally listed avoiding extended life machines and avoiding being a burden on loved ones last in order to expose some of the often unexpected and unpredictable situations facing those who are the caretakers of the terminally ill or are left behind after the death of a loved one.
The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote, “Death is not an event in life: we do not live to experience Death!”
This statement was made in 1972 and has a lot of truth hidden within it, in regard to the reality that death is very much so, an “Event in the Life” for all those who are left behind!
This matter of A Good Death is all about how to live in relation to others as we are dying, and how those of us close to the dying live and relate to the dying as they are dying. [quoted from Andrew Cooper, A Good Death? Journal of Social Work Practice, 2016 Vol. 30. No. 2. 121-127.
One of the fastest trends is people are desiring more and more to die at home. A recent report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found more people are dying at home. And Medicare is considering the site of death as a quality measure for end-of-life care, on the theory that dying at home may be less stressful than dying in an institution. https://www.forbes.com/sites/howardgleckman/2013/02/06/more-people-are-dying-at-home-and-in-hospice-but-they-are-also-getting-more-intense-hospital-care/#510051c5f99e
There are many unforeseen variables that often is not considered with family members who are the actual persons who are caring for family members who do decide to transition at home instead of the hospital.
The above link in the Forbes.com site reports some of them, as well as an article from the Huffpost.com entitled When Love Ones Die At Home.
Please consider this quote:
“Dying at home may be awesome for the dying. It’s hard to say since none have bothered to fill out a customer satisfaction survey from the other side,” she wrote on the Caregiver Space website.
“For family caregivers, the home hospice experience is not always as rosy as it is portrayed. It can be a gut-wrenching, soul-draining nightmare that no amount of therapy will ever be able to rectify.” https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dying-at-home-family-caregivers_n_592738e6e4b0df34c35ab57f?guccounter=1
The Ultimate Transition is To Be in Christ!
Well within Holy Scriptures, much is stated about death. The Scriptures defines death as sleep in relationship with the physical body exclusively. The sociologist Clive Seale speaks of dying people ‘falling from culture‘ as they become more dependent and unwell in the period, sometimes lengthy, that precedes death, as they lose connection with the network, and routine relationships that are the taken for granted social tissue of our aliveness.
There are two significant words in the Greek New Testament for the English term sleep, each of these is used both literally and figuratively, that is, for natural sleep, and as a symbol for death.
The term katheudo occurs 22 times in the New Covenant is used of ‘natural sleep’ [Matt. 13:25;25;5]. Another term in the New Covenant for ‘sleep’ is koimaomai (a form of koimao). The word is found 18 times predominately this word is used figuratively for the “sleep of death” [see Matt. 27:52; 1 Cor. 15:20; 1 Thess. 4:13-15]
Spiritual Blessings, Needs and Eternal Benefits
The very best preparation that any of us can have from the cradle to the grave is to live our lives in Christ. Of all of our greatest fears that is mentioned above in this blog post, Christ is the only effective cure for each of them, for us, while we yet live.
In the midst of all of this life’s troubles, one absolute truth is certain, Messiah has overcome the world! John 16:25-33. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John+16%3A25-33&version=NKJV
When Jesus appeared in a vision to the apostle John on the Isle of Patmos, He identified Himself with these words: “Do not be afraid; I am the First and the Last. I am He who lives, and was dead, and behold, I am alive forever-more. Amen. And I have the keys of Hades and of Death” (Rev. 1:17–18).
Jesus holds the keys to death, and Satan cannot snatch those keys out of His hand. Christ’s grip is firm. He holds the keys because He owns the keys. All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Him. That includes all authority over life and death. The angel of death is at His beck and call.
The message of Scripture is one of victory—full, final, and ultimate victory. It is not our doom that is certain, but Satan’s. His head has been crushed by the heel of Christ, who is the Alpha and Omega.
Above all suffering and death stands the crucified and risen Lord. He has defeated the ultimate enemy of life. He has vanquished the power of death. He calls us to die, a call to obedience in the final transition of life. Because of Christ, death is not final. It is a passage from one world to the next.
In Christ, death is our Ultimate Healing from everything in this fallen world.
Amen!
Grace and Peace