The first funeral I attended was my sister Laura's. She was 19 and I was 21. It was a pretty awful experience. Nothing would have made it easier. As I continued through life, I still avoided funerals. I didn't like to think about death. I went through a spiritual wilderness journey, exploring different concepts of what happens at death, and when I became a born again Christian at age 27, I thought I finally had it all figured out. However, I still didn't like to think about death.
My life started taking unexpected twists and turns a decade or so ago. Looking back on it now, it seems that this was when my spiritual journey intensified. A major unexpected occurrence was that I became a hospice nurse. I had been a baby nurse--what was I thinking!!? Over the course of my experience, I was forced to confront my own PDA (personal death awareness) and re-examine my beliefs.
Death always comes suddenly. One moment we are in the body, the next moment, the body is vacated. This is true even when we watch and wait and know it is coming. It is why I stayed with my mother during her last hours. I had stepped out of the room to grab a snack, and almost missed that last breath. We hear of people being "killed instantly" and feel gratefulness that they didn't suffer. One minute they were there, the next, gone. But that death, in my perspective, is not quicker than that of my mother's. The difference is, we had time to emotionally prepare. Or did we?
I have seen quite a few actual deaths. I have seen hundreds of dying people. I am grateful that my mother didn't experience "terminal restlessness." Hospice provided a medication in that event, and it went unused. She was very peaceful in those last hours. Very little medication was needed. I have seen people, in a seemingly unconscious state, tossing and turning, moaning and crying out (not related to pain) even with heavy medication. I have talked to people who are seeing dead loved ones in the room with us. Others just point wordlessly or look beyond me. I remember only one person who was terrified by what he was seeing. I can't claim to understand it. For a while I tried to make everything I witnessed line up with my (then) fundamentalist conservative evangelical Christian beliefs. Over time, I learned from every dying person I met, as well as their families. I was privileged to work with a chaplain who truly had a healing touch from God. He would work miracles with people who were having trouble leaving this world. These were the people who had unresolved issues with family--they had failed to make peace with men and with God. Rogers, the chaplain, would just put his hands around the person and pray in whatever way he knew would reach that person's soul, and it was different for everyone. I saw suffering people become calm, and die comfortably after his ministering presence when medication couldn't help.
I am having difficulty putting my experience into words. What I am trying to say is, I learned that I don't have it all figured out. I am and will always be Christian--that is, believing that there is a God who somehow became man, and that the kingdom of God is within us, as Jesus taught. I do know that we have a soul, and that when we look into a person's eyes, we are looking into their soul. At death, that soul, or spirit, leaves the body. You know this by looking at the eyes. I believe that sometimes, as in my mother's case, it is a process. The soul is there, waiting for the body to stop. The soul may not be in the body, just nearby. I have seen people who drift in and out of consciousness in the hours before death, and I think maybe the soul is going back and forth in its effort--what I call the "in-between" place.
I realize that much of what occurs can be attributed to changes in the chemistry of the body--the effects of disease and dehydration. There is a rational, scientific explanation for everything. But sit with the dying, talk with the dying, be there at the last breath--do it enough, and you are forced to wonder, whatever you start with.
A couple of hours before Mother left this earth, I got very close to her ear, as she lay there, peacefully. I spoke to her about how she would soon be seeing Laura, and talked about her parents and brother and sister who had died. I told her that it was ok for her to go, that we would be ok, and that someday we would all be together again. As I talked to her, her breathing got noticeably faster and deeper, then went back to its pattern. Later, Rachel, and then Hannah, spoke to her as I held the phone to her ear, and I noticed the same change in her breathing. I have no doubt that it was her spiritual essence responding in the only way her physical body would allow.
I believe that that spark of life that we call soul, or spirit, comes from God at conception and returns to God at death. This is my hope, and what I take comfort from when life is hard. I don't have all the answers about what happens when we die, and I don't believe anyone living in the body does. I believe that people love stories, and that is why we have the Bible--to learn from the stories of men and myths that life is a struggle, but there is more than this life, and it is simply beyond our ability to understand.
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