Death & Dying

Death, and the Triumph of Love

Preparing for Death and Dying

The Good, the Bad and the Goldfish

The Burial of the Dead

Graven Images

Transcending Death By Reaching Out to the Departed

Life — Finite, and Precious

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Life — Finite, and Precious

By Bishop Catherine Roskam

“How do you stand it? Don’t you get depressed?” So people would ask me from time to time when I was working in Hospice first as a volunteer and then as a seminarian. The question took me by surprise the first time I heard it, because depression was so far from what I felt about the work.

I experienced sadness, of course, when someone died. Unlike much of regular hospital chaplaincy, hospice work is a long-term team effort. We got to know not only the patients, but also their family members, friends, co-workers — even their pets. We were often with them for months, sometimes as long as a year. Sometimes we were privileged to be with them at the actual moment of death. And afterwards, we were involved in bereavement care for those who mourned them. So the losses were up close and personal.

We got sad, but we did not get depressed because the work was not so much about death as it was about life. A person might come to us isolated, afraid, alone in facing a difficult prognosis. But in the context of a loving and supportive community, we watched time and again as acceptance led to renewed hope, faith and joy.

All life is finite. So much in our culture militates against accepting that fact. But paradoxically, the acceptance of finitude makes every moment of life more precious. The knowledge of its preciousness breaks us open to a heightened awareness of the gifts around us that we so often ignore because of our busy-ness. And so the apprehension of our mortality can lead us ever more fully into joy and gratitude.

The church fathers knew this. That is why, as part of their spiritual life, they often kept some reminder of death or memento mori, such as a skull, about them. They were not being morbid; they were increasing mindfulness of life.

No one can tell the meaning of a story until it has ended. Memento mori invites us to write the narrative of our lives more intentionally. The heart of our stories is not so much what happens to us, as how we respond to what happens to us; it is not the things we cannot control, but the choices we make over the things that are in our control.

Perhaps that is why God, the divine Author, gave us free will in the beginning, so that we too might be authors, telling our individual and corporate stories through the creative word of our embodied lives.

As we come to the yearly remembrance of Christ’s passion and death and the celebration of his resurrection, we are reminded anew that death, as final as it seems, does not have the last word. The paschal mystery is the gateway of the faithful, not to a cycle of dying and rebirth, but to a progression through dying into newness of life. In Christ we are not recycled; we are transformed, our stories enfolded into his redemptive story. This is the basis of all our hope.

May God bless you in this holy season and always.

“Como puedes tolerarlo? No te deprimes?” Asi me preguntaba la gente de vez en cuando durante el tiempo que trabaje en un Hospicio, primero como voluntaria y despues como seminarista. La cuestion me tomo por sorpresa porque la depresion era lo menos que yo sentia en este trabajo.

Si sentia tristeza por supuesto cuando alguien moria. Al contrario de la mayoria del trabajo hospitalario el trabajo de hospicio es un trabajo de equipo a largo plazo. Llegabamos a conocer no solo a los pacientes sino a los familiares, compañeros de trabajo, y hasta las mascotas. Estabamos con ellos por meses, hasta un año. Ha veces teniamos el privilegio de estar con ellos en el momento de su muerte. Y despues nos envolviamos en el cuidado de los que lloraban su perdida. Las perdidas eran cercanas y personales.

Nos sentiamos tristes pero no deprimidas porque el trabajo no era tanto sobre la muerte como sobre la vida.Una persona podia venir a nosotros aislada, temerosa, sola al enfrentar una prognosis dificil. Pero en el contexto de una comunidad amorosa de apoyo, una y otra vez vimos como la aceptacion conducia a la esperanza renovada, la fe y el gozo.

Toda vida es finita. Hay tanto en nuestra cultura que milita contra la aceptacion de ese hecho. Pero paradojicamente la aceptacion de la finitud hace la vida mas preciosa. El conocimiento de esa preciosidad nos abre a una conciencia mas elevada de los dones alrededor de nosotros que a menudo ignoramos por estar sobre-ocupados. Y asi la aprehension de nuestra mortalidad puede conducirnos cada vez con mas plenitud al gozo y al agradecimiento.

Los padres de la iglesia supieron esto. Por eso como parte de su vida spiritual siempre mantenian un recordatorio de la muerte o memento mori, como una calavera, con ellos. No es que eran morbidos sino que estaban aumentando su conciencia de la vida.

Nadie puede contar una historia que tenga sentido hasta que la historia se acaba. Memento mori nos invita a escribir la narrativa de nuestras vidas mas intencionalmente. El corazon de nuestras historias no es tanto lo que nos pasa sino como respondemos a lo que nos pasa; no tanto las cosas que no podemos controlar sino las decisiones que hacemos sobre las cosas que estan bajo nuestro control.

Tal vez por eso Dios, el autor divino, nos dio el libre albedrio al principio para que nosotros seamos autores, y contemos nuestra historia colectiva e individual a traves de la palabra creativa de nuestras vidas encarnadas.

Ahora que llegamos otra vez al recordatorio anual de la pasion y muerte de Cristo y la celebracion de su resureccion, se nos recuerda que la muerte, aunque parece final, no tiene la ultima palabra. El misterio pascual el la puerta de entrada de los fieles, no a un ciclo de vida y reencarnacion, sino a una novedad de vida a traves de la muerte. En Cristo no somos reciclados; somos transformados, nuestras historias estan envueltas en su historia redentiva. Esta es la base de toda nuestra esperanza.

Que Dios los bendiga en esta estacion santa y siempre.