Dying doesn’t begin all at once. Like birth, there are a multitude of beginnings. Even now, we carry the egg of death in our bodies.
One way Dad’s death begins is this. On a Friday afternoon not long after Christmas, he starts weeping in the dining hall. So seemingly absent of emotion for so long, this is unusual. He also won’t eat. And his heart rate is high.
This same afternoon, my family is visiting the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadalupe church. Adrianne lights a candle and says a prayer for Dad. On the way home, we stop to visit him, and a manager greets us at the entrance to the facility. She’s just gotten off the phone with Mom, she tells us. Dad’s not well. She’s not sure exactly what is happening, but it’s good we’re here. Mom is on her way.
Like my wife, this manager has seen enough people die to intuit it’s arrival, even if she doesn’t say so. This arrival is not a measurable thing. A presence emerges within someone, and from then on does not leave. A light retreats from the eyes, and the body looks more dull, less there. The breath can last days or weeks or months or even a year like this, but from then on one dwells in the territory of death. My wife has seen this happen over and over, the children have noticed this with other residents, and today we see it with Dad.
Tears have streamed from his eyes all afternoon. I help my wife bring him to the bathroom, and whisper to her: “His mouth is hanging open.” It’s a distinct gaping, the look of someone on their death bed. Adrianne nods, as she’s noticed this, too. My dad looks up at us from his wheelchair and snaps his mouth closed.
***
We will approach this death as a ceremony.
There will be no funeral home. No strangers handling Dad. No body bag. No separation from his body. No injecting his body with formaldehyde, coloring agents, or other chemicals. No extravagant costs. No following the checklists of one final industry.
We wouldn’t know how to approach death this way except for a small, quiet group of volunteers started in our community in 2006. Founded and led by women, the Threshold Care Circle supports families who want to do home-based care and rituals after the death of a loved one.
Several years ago, Adrianne and Mom took their workshop. Now in the territory of death, we need more guidance and set up a meeting with one of Threshold’s founders, Susan Nesbit*.
We bring her all of our questions and worries, and this is what she tells us:
Get clear with the hospice workers about your choice to limit morphine. No one wants needless suffering, but discomfort and pain? We don’t fear that. This is a birth after all.
When he dies, there is no rush. Declutter the room. Demedicalize the room. Sit with him, talk with him, explain what’s happening. Consider choosing one person who will do nothing after his last breath but pray with him until his body is back home.
It’d be best to have eight people carry his body to the car, but you can do it with six. Or four strong people.
Bring a sheet from home. Put it underneath him. Roll up the sheet on the sides to make handles. Have someone at the head and someone at the feet. Do a practice lift. Shimmying through the doors can be awkward, but you’ll figure it out.
Carry him out the front door, never the back door. The culture hides death, but we choose not to. Invite people to come sing as you carry him from his room out to the car.
Ask a friend to handle logistics, someone not afraid of asking people for help. Death makes people uncomfortable, and it’s a gift to have something to do. And there will be lots to do.
Don’t worry about food. It’ll just show up.
In some places they hold a round-the-clock vigil with the body for a week. In other places, three days is common, which feels about right. But there’s no rule, and the length is dependent on circumstances, like travel schedules of out-of-town family.
Use ice packs to keep his body cool during the vigil. Change them every six hours or so. Crack a window in the room.
To dig a grave in winter, put strawbales or leaf mulch over the area to insulate it from the cold. Then light a fire over the site and let it burn at least 24 hours to thaw out the frozen ground. Dig three-and-a-half feet down and lay his body there, where the microbial community is most active.
When you call a funeral director, all your power is gone, but all your work is gone, too. To a lot of people that’s pleasing. But you are choosing something else. There’s a lot of unknowns when you haven’t done this before, but don’t worry. All will become intuitive. Once you begin, you’ll find this stuff is in your deep memory.
***
Death is a foreign land our culture does not like to visit. It’s terrain is unfamiliar, not talked about, fearful. A wall of industry generally blocks entrance. But through the organizing and guidance of this small group of women, we have made our way here. Standing within it, it’s not so bad.
Today Dad has begun to die, and we order Mexican for dinner and eat in his room with him. Afterwards he rests in his recliner. On the other side of the facility, a choir sings. It’s cliché to describe singing as angelic, but this choir is. Our family takes turns going to hear them – a group of Christian, plain-clothed youth singing in cherubic tones not explored by mainstream culture.
When they finish singing in the dining hall, I ask if they might sing for my dad. Generously, they do. Standing outside his doorway, thirty or so angels sing in heartbreaking tones about heaven.
So begins Dad’s death ceremony. Now when he sleeps, which is more and more, his mouth will hang open in that way. Now he will he eat less and less, and family or staff will feed him when he does eat. Now Mom will sleep overnight with him more and more, spend more of her days with him.
My brothers will come. Matt will lead us in rosaries. Jimmy will cook something delicious. We will play music, drink beer, do what we always do together, but it will all somehow be something more, a new harmony will emerge, a minor chord, making old patterns more sad and heavenly at once. And before two months is over, a child will lay a flower on his grave.
*You can find my podcast interview with Susan Nesbit here.
Amazing stuff Joe. Keep going!
Very touching and real. Thank you for sharing this intimate season with us. This is territory we are all coming to. I feel the weight and quiet solemnity myself in this time. Keep writing.