by Joan Mitchell, CSJ
At a parish panel on ordaining women deacons, I visited with Father Jim, another panel member, newly retired from 30 years in hospice work. In his presentation Father Jim explained that he had worked with many women in hospice and had seen women’s vocation to service in action. Those most effective in hospice ministry have a sense of vocation, he said. For them, accompanying people in the last months and weeks of their lives is a not a job but a calling, a way to use their gifts to serve others and live out their baptismal call.
I had just finished reading Paul Kalanithi’s memoir When Breath Becomes Air, a young neurosurgeon‘s inspiring story of living fully as he faces terminal lung cancer. I recommended the book to Father Jim. In his last days the doctor loves to hold the baby that he and his wife decide to have along the journey. His wife finishes the book he wants to write. The title refers to the moment of death.
I shared with Father Jim that in our family someone often comes for the person who is dying. My mother told Dad that his father, a beloved man already gone to God, was coming for her. Father Jim says this is common. These stories of those already with God being present with the dying have deepened his faith in resurrection.
Recently my brother and some of his family were paging through the family album. My brother received a living-donor liver transplant from his son, Jason. On one page a photo caught Jason’s eye. “Who is this?” he wanted to know. “This woman was sitting beside my bed every time I woke up in the hospital after the transplant.” He had never told anyone about this. The woman in the photo was my mom, who died several years before he was born.
My siblings and I have experienced mother with us at times. She has now been dead seven years longer than the 51 years she lived. But she hasn’t left us orphans any more than Jesus leaves his disciples orphans. Somehow we continue in and with each other as Jesus promises in Sunday’s gospel.
- When have you experienced a loved one with you?