First, I would like to say I am not sad, nor maudlin, nor depressed, nor frightened, nor facing a life-threatening illness. Instead, I am in the midst of the happiest and richest years of my life (to date) and am able at this point to look at this topic optimistically…and further, want to really acknowledge those who have taken it upon themselves to be the Docent’s of end-of-living journeys. I use the word Docent because the metaphorical relationship to those who guide us through museums, telling the stories and histories of great works of art, being an expert in pacing and explanation…it seems to fit with the Hospice nurses I have met and those involved in Palliative Care. They are guides while they are caregivers; they see art where I might see fear; they see what is in order and what is beautiful and train the eyes and ears of those less knowledgeable. For me, today, it seems to fit.

All of that said, I would never have expected to be as familiar with the death and dying process as I am now. I had anticipated for years the inevitability of my grandparents dying…then, as I got older, my own parents. However, going through the end of life process is so very different that just “dying.” I am acutely aware that in the same way living is a process that exists in space over time, so is the deathing process in space over time. It has a physicality about it that can neither be avoided nor denied. But, the process of dying is only entered when one does not end life abrubtly…suddenly.

My own mother died somewhat knowing that this could be what was up for her…but, her dying was so sudden neither she nor any of us could take it on like an event. It was over before it got started. I have thought for many years that she won the game of life because, had she not died, she would have been told she had terminal cancer… the ending would have been the same, but the process so very complex and difficult. My Father and Dallas’ parents both had longer lives, longer to deal with the end of life…the epilogue that spelled out new terms for living, that negotiated a different day-to-day perspective, that demanded a strength of spirit from all of us to walk through this holding hands until we had to let go.

So, what is it that Hospice and Palliative Care offers to this bookend of life? Regardless of the rhetoric and liturgical explanations of what death is in relationship to life, the reality (from where I see it today) is that we each will live until our last breath. I will be alive and conscious to some degree until my body stops… And, the question I have had and continue to ponder is how I will handle my own awareness of entering this epilogue of life, the chapter that is headed up “The End of Susan’s life.”

My sister-in-law, is a Hospice nurse. Susan Talon-Mazer…the docent of life to her patients and their families, she has brought such conscious value to how life is lived each day. She has also brought that sense of being present to her kids and husband…and to Dallas and I. I know that I cannot know what she knows about dying, but we are all blessed by what she knows about living. When my Dad was in the last hours of his life, I called her on my cell phone. She asked that I put the phone up to his mouth so that she could hear his breathing. She then knew what stage of dying he was in; She guided me as to how I could best mid-wife him into his next life. Only one who embraces this part of life can understand this part of death…the entry.

I hope that as I live the next few decades (being optimistic), at the end of it all, I have a caring docent to walk me to the other side. If my husband precedes me or follows me, that neither of us will have to walk through this denying what it is or the privilege of this process.

What has your experience been with Hospice? With watching the magic of palliative care clinicians and nurses invest in the comfort that makes life livable? How has it felt to you to be with someone when they died…or knew that they were dying? If we had to draw the picture out, how would we each graduate from the High School of Life…to go on and to carry-on..?