Living All the Way

When a hospice nurse explained the physical and emotional benchmarks in the end stages of life that my mother-in-law would experience after her cancer metastasized, a light went on in my head. I had been schooled in the physical and emotional phases of birth with Lamaze; dying is the journey at the other end of life! Both are wrought on sacred ground, accompanied by pain and awe and the unexpected. And both can reveal true miracles that cannot be foreseen unless we get out of the way and allow the process to reveal itself. Fifteen years later—eleven as a hospice volunteer and four on an interdisciplinary team—I appreciate the practical factors, financial and physical, of hospice care. The spiritual dimensions make this work I can’t NOT do. If we put away our fear, we can make choices for ourselves and with our loved ones that allow living all the way to the end with grace and dignity and peace.