2023.07.16 Dying or What?, Lyn G. Brakeman, Spiritual Lemons, blog post

Readiness cannot be known. 

As a trained pastoral counselor and chaplain I worked in hospitals where the hurried and busy medical staff knew all the answers and had all the cures and all the medications. I felt useless because all I could do was listen and stay present. I learned two things. First, I was very much needed when a family or patient was sitting by terrified and knowing nothing. I could listen, and that presence counted alongside all the data.  

Next, I learned about humility. It is not self-abasement as if I were worthless. Nor was it self-aggrandizement as if I were the only true healer around. 

Humility is being right-sized—not too big and not too small. 

All I could do before, after, and sometimes during a dying was: Be present, pray a little, respect whatever cultural traditions families or religions kept, keep silence, listen, and wait. Yes, touch is the last sense to go when anyone dies, so, if you are the only one present, gently touch (not grasp and hold onto) a hand. You will know when to let go. There may or may not be any last words. 

Thou shalt never say: “I know just how you feel.”

You do not know how anyone feels even if you have been in similar circumstances. You do not know. It is emotionally intelligent not to assume or judge any feelings correct or incorrect.  

Nor do you know exactly when a person will die or how. Some people prefer to die alone. It’s okay to ask. Many people stay alive to take care of their loved one whom they assume will be devastated by their death.  They will. And they will be all right. 

Many people die just as they have lived. It’s a matter of personality, the way you are. My mother put on a fresh coat of lipstick, turned on her side, and said to her granddaughter: “This won’t take long, darling.” 

*  *  *  *

I have laughed at the parable story Jesus tells about the Sower who sows seeds wherever he goes. The seed falls on many kinds of soil. Some of it bears fruit, some not so much. The Sower keep on sowing anyway. So resist getting all mixed up in discerning what kind of soil you might be. 

In Israel, most of the soil is rough and unfriendly anyway. The anawin (peasants and poor people) had the worst soil to plant, the least likely soil to bear fruit to sustain and provide food for the hungry. This parable has an economic meaning. It is written to the poor, encouraging them that God, the Sower, is still sowing no matter what. It is also an admonishment to the wealthy to be humble, share and not hoard. 

How can you be a sower? 

                               *  *  *  *

You never know as much as you are sure you know. Be humble. Listen. Hope against hope. Assume nothing. Dying remains a mystery and readiness unknowable.

Honest to God, I once sat with a man who was dying. The family had said their farewells. It appeared as if this man was waiting for something  more. I asked. He said: “I had to wait for the priest to come anoint me. I can’t die until he gets here.” I nodded and I will not tell you my thoughts. We waited. Finally, the priest came running down the hall. I could hear his steps, his panting breath. He rushed into the room, fished a stole from his pocket along with a small vial full of anointing oil.  The patient was tightly blanketed lying in his bed. The priest fumbled to loosen the blanket at the bottom of the bed, reached under and, honest to God, anointed the man’s big toe with and the proper Latin words.  The man sighed with contentment and died.   Honest to God.

How little we know—how very very little.   

2021.06.20 Dad

I loved my father through thick and thin, and he is, in fact, one reason I never call God Father.

Everyone thinks my aversion to God as Father is just my feminist politics, or my distaste for traditional theological language that confines divinity within the corset of excessive almightiness, ultra-distancing transcendence, exclusive masculinity, and fatherhood forever and ever amen.

Yes, I know the earthly Jesus is remembered as using the term Abba for God, but why wouldn’t he do that?  He was a Jewish son of the covenant. Also, Abba was natural and intimate, suitable for just what he wanted to convey about God’s loving presence—and not enough.

Some people think I would eliminate “Father” for God, because I was abused by my earthly father and therefore Father is negative, frightening. That may be true for some, but not for me. I loved my dad, and I always knew for certain that he was not divine—not God, only godly.   

Dad gave me my name. I was, in my mother’s dreams, supposed to be Michael McDonald, named after my dad: McDonald Gillespie—such a handsome name. He was very handsome in fact, with thick dark hair, a solemn yet dignified air, a crisp sense of humor, and a ski-jump nose. I look like him—nose and all. I have a better picture in the "somewhere" category, but here is Dad when I was about three and earned him an exemption from WWII.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He died with his dappled-gray but still thick mane in tact, and, so far, mine remains thus. The name they liked was Linda with a middle name Hall, my maternal grandmother’s maiden name. My father wanted to call me Lin, but the spelling didn’t work, so he changed the spelling to LYnda to call me Lyn or Lynnie. Between natural looks and naming, in addition to my own personality—shy, taciturn and, let’s just say, not extroverted but boldly introverted—I was “baptized” by my father. 

Dad drank and smoked to help his personality along. I did the same. He died at 71 of smoking-induced esophageal cancer. He smoked right up to his end, claiming in his sardonic way that he had to smoke Lucky Strikes, because the advertising company in which he rose to the executive level advertised this brand. I knew and he knew that was blarney, but we knew little about addictions back then.  “Everyone’s doing it” is probably the worst reason in the world to do anything. Still, human beings, like all other animals, instinctively continue to think that copy-catting is a worthy rationale for most behavior.

Until it’s not quite right.

My father was brave. I saw this in two particular ways.  We summered at a farm in upstate New York and once Dad, city boy through and through, was invited to help Farmer Kurt to prod an angry bull onto a truck—nasty business. The stud bull had done his sperm-work with cows, and now he had to return to his own farm. This bull was enraged, snorting, bellowing, and tossing his well-horned and bulky head before he charged with all his bullish might, at several men, including Dad, protected by a mere pitchfork, pale imitatio of bullness. Kurtie had named this bull Donny after my dad. I was miniscule at eight and stood way back to watch. Terrified. 

The bull veered left right toward my dad. “Jump back fast, Donny,” Kurt yelled. “He’s headed for you.” Daddy jumped away just in time.

The men and their forks won. They finally got the rampaging bull onto the truck and off. Daddy returned to get me and take me home. On the way home I jabbered about how scared I was. My father listened and, I noted, failed to brag. I asked, “Were you afraid, Daddy?”  “You bet I was, Lynnie!”  

It was in that moment of modest truth that I knew my father had true courage—not God but godly.

One other moment I saw his courage was at our family Christmas dinner—his last—in 1982. He was at home recuperating from surgery to excise a large cancerous tumor from his esophagus, but he wasn’t normal at all. He couldn’t swallow, so he had, not only tubes for breathing, but a a tube that went into a bag to drain saliva from the side of his throat, not to mention the feeding tube in his gut. He was still handsome. He sang “Oh Holy Night” in his rich bass voice the night before to the nurse, and on Christmas day we all gathered as usual at the family table. Dad in his wheelchair took his place at the head—unable to taste or chew a single morsel of food or even imbibe a sip of any liquid. He asked the nurse to bring him a cup of coffee. We watched it dribble out and into the waiting catch bowl. “Boy, that hit the spot,” he said as he raised his coffee cup. “Merry Christmas everyone. Merry Christmas.”

Holidays have souls.

Within a week Dad was dead. He just went to bed to groan away his last hours—minute by precious minute. He was not in physical pain, although it sounded as if he were. His job was dying, and he did not “go gentle into that dark night”, as the poet words it. He did go decisively. My sister, my mother, and I kept vigil. I counted his periodic groans by the quarter-hour bong of the old grandfather clock. I went home and actually slept till Mom called at about 6 a.m. Dad was dead.

I don’t know if he had any last words to my mother, but his last words to me were: “What’s the point?”  It was a phrase he often used as he wondered, as most of us do, about the tragic exigencies of life and death. His youngest daughter had predeceased him by just a couple of years. I had no idea what the “point” was, but I promised to let him know if I found out—one of my dumbest and most holy of promises, and one I knew I couldn’t keep.  

The last time I saw my father was as a limp body in the strong sinewy arms of the funeral home director. I noticed how paper thin his dangling legs were and wondered how they had the strength to play so much golf in his last years. You think weird things at such times.

The dying do not care much about the living when they are dying. They have a job to do, a sacred and holy task, and most people do it in their own way— not God but godly.

Happy Father’s Day, Dad. I love you to tears. 

2016.09.04 Choose LIfe!

I visited a dying woman today in a hospice facility. Although it was a final goodbye and sad, I became suddenly and intensely aware, as I’d never been before, of the near-ultimate importance of setting. I mean if you’re going to die, it’s such a gift to die surrounded, yes, by family and friends and love, but also by beauty—inside and out.

Writers are always instructed to pay attention to the place or the setting of a book or poem. Actions and inner reflections and dialogue and other things are important, but where it all takes place provides both stability and ambience. Setting enhances or diminishes whatever is taking place

This hospice is clean, sweet-smelling (not artificially so), and set in a woody space with well- groomed bright gardens. The furniture is attractive, comfortable and not heavy— not Motel 6. And of course the professional and volunteer staff mirror the setting, just as cheerful and just as gracious. Also, you can order anything you want to eat. My friend ordered a strawberry frappe for her lunch—that’s all. There is nothing institutional about this place. It’s peace itself.

Today in church I spoke about the passage in Deuteronomy 30, the one in which God invites the people to choose life. God declares:

“See! I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity . . .life and death, blessings and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may live in the land I swore to you and your ancestors to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.”  I would add: and to Jesus, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, Miriam, Hagar, Mary—you and me.

First, a word about Land values. Not real estate. According to Amy-Jill Levine, author and professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt, the land is in the drinking water for Jews. Whether religious or not, Jews are imbued with the value of the land. Land meant God’s faithfulness and gift. God never forgets God’s people. It is not necessarily literal, as some may think, but symbolic of God’s love and of the covenant. It’s the relationship in God that gives life—not the dirt.

I believe that Jesus Christ is to Christians what land is to Jews—a place in the divine soul forever.  Such a setting!  In this context God invites us to CHOOSE LIFE. If you obey and follow you’re okay, and if not you’re outside the covenant.

Christians pale at this. Love is too conditional. We want grace, grace and free grace.

Still, I ask: are these the facts of life or a threat?  I think we are so afraid of divine punitive action that we perceive threat not choice. And we impose threat into the text and into our understanding of God.

I love the Old Testament for its crispness, stating it like it is, and God always offering a recipe and a choice. We all know that if we choose X YX will probably happen, or if we choose another way, something else will happen. Not rocket science. The most powerful phrase in this Deuteronomy text, however, is God’s passionate plea, issued twice: CHOOSE LIFE!  It would not say choose if it did not mean just that.

Choice of course is complex, loaded—rarely as simple as it looks. For example, for many of us we can choose to have a glass of wine or not with our meal. For an addict that choice is neither free nor easy. OR… a choice to skip church and have a brunch with my family. OK for some, even for off-duty clergy. But for someone who has been strictly conditioned in religious obligation, believing it God’s will, there is deep threat, and that choice is emotionally fraught.

We should never judge, mock or stigmatize anyone’s choices, including our own.

A Choose Life ethic requires lots of wisdom, reflection, and compassion for yourself and others. It also requires remembering: when and how in the past have you been able to choose life? We choose it, and we remember that Jesus did, every time we receive the Sacrament of Eucharist.

About 15 years ago  a friend and parishioner in Connecticut was dying of cancer. I’d loved this woman, and I didn’t even know she was dying, because we had moved. One day she emailed me and briefly told me her circumstances: she had cancer, she’d left the church, she was still in touch with God and praying, and she remembered the Education for Ministry (EfM) group I’d mentored where she’d learned so much about the bible. Then she asked a question: What is that passage in scripture you loved and always used to blat on about you—you know the one that says Choose life. Where is it in the bible? I know you know. Email me right away. I’m dying and I still want to choose life.”   I did. Before she died she wrote again to thank me, to ask me to preach at her funeral, and to tell me:
                           “I’m dying and I’m choosing life.”

You’re wondering about grace?
    God’s grace is in the invitation to freely choose, well apprised of the facts, and even when you face the unknown.  
    God’s grace is in the oft-repeated invitation to choose life.
    Grace too is in the openness of this covenant. It’s never closed, no matter how many different times and ways you choose life—over and over and over.  So drop the closed-door fantasy!

What today does choose life mean to you? What in your past gives you courage? What does it mean for the Church, for Christianity, for all religion to choose life?

                                             CHOOSE LIFE.

2014.08.24 Death and Hope

My dad would be 103 today. I think of him a lot. He was a taciturn guy, drop-dead handsome, as they say, quiet to excess, unless he held a martini in hand—or when he died. Dying, he made lots of noise. 

Phrases in Christian hymns, chants and prayers, and sermons, especially during the run-up to Easter, say things like, “They did not know what we know now,” or “We know how this story ends.” Do we?

Such self-assured smug Christianity does not appeal to me at all. I don’t trust it, which probably makes me a good Anglican.   

Is there a soul among us who embraces our death with sanguinity? Unless bio-life is simply not bearable, most of us really want to live and fight hard for that chance to live on. We do NOT know what will happen after we die, in the way we think of knowing. Faith knowing is a risk, not an assurance. I'll get honest and admit I'm a faithful agnostic when it comes to end times. I don't know, any more than the first Christians did.  

A woman in a Lenten reflection group last year commented with a chuckle: “I hope to hell that what they’re telling us is true.” Hers seemed to be a more truthful statement than many Christians would dare make about the promise of resurrection. There was an edge of worry in her humor and our laughter.

What’s important, I think, is not to try to push and shove some kind of faith into place, like last-minute soul-shaping, just in case. Some say that faith-knowing is a gift only God Holy Spirit gives, and that it is given in the context of knowing each soul quite well. Sounds good, but how come some people seem to have it, and some don't? It does come more easily to some than to others. I don't know why.

Still, the time of dying is a time when people often worry about having enough faith. For what? Most people die with the personalities they lived with.

My dad wrestled his “demons” to the pillow, accompanied by the chiming of the grandfather clock. He was not in physical pain; he was groaning in travail as if he were waiting to be birthed—like creation. At one point he came briefly out of his dying and boldly asked me: "What's the point?"  It was something he often said, almost rhetorically abut many things. I panicked. I thought that I, as a hot-shot seminarian— at Yale (Dad's alma mater) no less— ought to have the right theological answer, the soothing one. I didn't. So I just said, "I don't know, Dad. But when you find out, if you can, find a way to let me know." God, I felt inadequate. I should have said I love you or something personal, but the moment vanished as he sunk back into his dying.

My mother, au contraire, ordered a peanut butter sandwich as her last meal, and told her granddaughter: “This won’t take long, dear.”  She was 84, a widow, living in a nursing home; she had some kind of internal bleed and had refused hospitalization. Then she, not in physical pain, turned aside, and onto her side—away from the door to her room, the door to the world—and settled into her dying without a fuss, leaving the sandwich untouched. 
 


Do I think my mother had more faith than me or my dad? Perhaps at a very childish level, yes. She always told me she would put her head in God’s lap, and everything would be all right. (I think she meant her own father’s lap. He died when she was twelve.)

Do I think my dad lacked faith? Not at all. He had esophageal cancer and couldn't eat or drink anything by mouth. He was only 71 and could have lived that way, waiting for medical science to come up with something, but I think he made a choice to die. It took a week. He had things to settle his soul about, and he didn’t talk about these things in death any more than he ever had in life. It is by faith that I "know" he has discovered "the point."

*  *  *  *

My own feeling is that when we come to our death there comes a time of almost uncanny repose. I saw that a lot when I was a hospital chaplain. I don’t know if it is acceptance, although that word works, but it looked and sounded to me like embracing death almost as a friend or setting one's face in a new direction, as Jesus did toward Jerusalem. Or, like Jesus’ remembered sighs on the cross: It is finished. I commend my spirit. To what? To faith, hope and love, but not to certainty. To God, the giver of those seminal spiritual gifts.

Dying is our last life task/accomplishment. We do it with as much grace and faith as we can muster, each according to each one’s way. It is like commendation, not forced or giving up, but free: I will follow; it's time; I'm ready. But after death is God’s business and god keeps it to Herself. Some have returned to tell beautiful stories. They help my faith, not my knowledge. Like a kid for Christmas morning, I will have to wait and see.

Saint Francis called Death a Sister— a term of endearment, not enmity. I wonder if that is why many people die when their anxious grieving loved ones are gone from their bedside, and only a solo chaplain-stranger may stay on in the dark?

Such a strategic attitude and language, I think, would be more helpful to the ways we talk about life-threatening illness, physical and mental. We threaten it back, saying we will battle you, we will fight you, we will reject you, win over you. You are enemy and hateful. We make illness and death sound like condemnation or punishment. What if we, like addicts, befriended disease as a part of our humanity? They speak of being IN recovery, not cured. They will always be addicts.

We must seek treatment and cures, of course, and, at the same time, pray and have faith and courage. Fight FOR life, but don't make whatever we have into our enemy.

I suppose I could say that I hope my death is transition to a new kind of life. I am always IN God, just as I'm always IN recovery from sin, into some form of which I daily fall. But after I die, leave for good, I hope to fall into the soul of Godde more deeply—leave for good, to newer be.

The poet says it best: "we turn not older with years
                                    but newer everyday."

Thanks, Emily. And Happy Birthday, Dad.