Death and Dying

This is partly a reading recommendation, but partly just to open up any musings on the subject people might have, including other reading recommendations...

I've been reading a book by a French journalist named Nicolas Diat called "A Time to Die: Monks on the Threshold of Eternal Life" - he spends time in monasteries around France talking to the monks about death and dying. I'm finding it really moving and honest. Here are a few quotes I liked so far:

“The monks who do well are those who know that we are all a little damaged. In a monastery, we often have a little account to settle with normality”, the Father Abbot confided in me.

"Brother Joseph became incapable of holding a conversation. He no longer knew his own name or those of others. For his part, Father Efflam no longer had control of the threads of his own life, but he had not forgotten anything about those of others. He remained capable of having endless discussions about the history of France and the geography of some distant country. The two men spent their days together. Alone, they were lost, disoriented, unhappy. But when the brother infirmarian placed the hand of one in that of the other, they would go for a walk together on the little paths that surrounded the monastery. In church, Father Efflam and Brother Joseph were recollected, focused. They resembled children learning to pray. In the afternoon, they sat beside each other, always in the same place, and they talked for hours, about everything and nothing."

"If you look after a patient going to bed two hundred times a year, it is difficult to maintain the same attentiveness as during the early days. We are not looking to avoid the facts. The infirmary monks need to be vigilant so as not to transform a brother into a thing they take care of mechanically and as quickly as possible. The risk of commodification of the sick exists. I must pray to keep the strength of my desire to serve awake. Father Andry is Christ. When we come before God, we will be accountable for our charity toward the weakest. I need to know how to lose my time for the sick. In life, giving freely is essential. Christ said that the man who loses his life gains it. When I enter the room, I stroke his hand to revive our brotherhood; and I tell him: ‘Ah, Brother Bernard, you are my brother, my beloved brother, my big brother!’ ”

"he described his vision of the monastic ideal: “Becoming a child implies a change, an effort, real work. This transformation, however, is the indispensable condition for entering into the family of God, into his sanctuary, into the kingdom of heaven, for entering into this game that is the monastic life. But spiritual childhood, of what does it consist? In a word, it is made of simplicity, trust, complete abandonment in the hands of God. . . . Thus, the monastic life is a life made for children. The monastic life is a game, the great game of charity. In a game, it is necessary to respect the rules; it is the same in the monastic life. The monastic life is a game played with God and with those the Lord has chosen to lead to the monastery, those we call our brothers."

"If immediate consciousness can weaken, Dom Forgeot is convinced conversely that “the meaning of prayer remains until the final moment. Prayer is a surrender into the hands of God. How could it stop at the very moment when the encounter approaches? A patient with a brain tumor can no longer say the rosary. But the intention of the act, which consists in wanting to be with Mary, cannot change. The forms of meditation and contemplation change, the essence remains the same. The comatose monk still lives with God. The mystery of death and resurrection is at the center of his life.”

Anyway, just some tidbits.

I have a rather odd fondness for funerals. When I first converted I used to work for a group run by the archdiocese that prayed at funerals in the main cemeteries. I found it very touching, though I found the group very hard to 'get' - a common problem for me here, where there is a social dynamic in large groups that I find mystifying. Anyway, I gave it up after a while out of sheer confusion, but the actual part of attending to the grieving families in the cemetery chapels I thought very sweet. I still enjoy going to funeral Masses. I do wish they would use the Requiem Mass! It's a work of art, and profound prayer. It's been 'updated', like much else. Ah well. I have some friends lined up to sing the old rite for me when I die. I can sing it for them, too.

Interesting. One of the main reasons I started meditating was to cope with the terror and disorientation that resulted from my dad dying (followed in quick succession by a friend our age who had a terrible accident, my husband having a non fatal accident, both our cats dying, and my favorite horse dying). I remember feeling utterly unprepared, and wanting to somehow find a way to calm down and prepare myself for my own inevitable end. One of the most striking things to me was how suddenly things changed: that is, when my dad was alive he carefully kept a very tidy house, full of good literature, with all his nice tools arranged properly in the garage. When he was gone, we had to sort everything fast - we all lived far away and had work. The house needed to be sold to pay debts. It turned out to need a new roof and so on. The books - everyone had a huge collection already. We all (and some friends) took a few. But then they went to the curb in boxes for foragers to take. The nice tools were great, but I lived in an apartment in the city, my sister already had her own collection of necessary tools, none of us did shop work...they were sold for a few hundred dollars at a garage sale. Just to mention a few concrete examples of things he was obsessed with caring for and fussing over that in the end were ashes and dust, just like him. And that totally freaked me out. I knew then that all this stuff I get so fussed about (projects, clothes, what people think of me, etc.) will one day, any day, also be ashes and dust. So that started me meditating.

I must say it has worked, at least in theory. I am not afraid to die in the abstract, at least. That said, when I was attacked by a dog a couple years ago I fought for my life, on pure instinct. But the attack was also brought on by stepping in front of the dog to protect some kids it was attacking, which wasn't something I thought through, but in hindsight just seemed like the kind of thing I was brought up to do, and that anyone in my family would have done. That to say, how we think about death in the abstract (or in a slow situation like "maybe I have cancer") is likely quite different from dealing with an emergency. There have been times in meditation when I literally thought I was going to die, or when I wanted to die, being either in one of those states of terror that can sometimes arise, or in a longer bout of depression which I seem to have some tendency towards. But that's also different than actually being in a crisis or actually being in the doctor's office and getting bad test results.

Anyway, that article is interesting, Tom. I've heard of similar sorts of practices (Saint Gertrude did something similar, a priest I know said they used to have to do a similar exercise in seminary).

I was thinking earlier today how some people get really freaked out about the end of the world (by whatever causes), and wondering if such a reflection isn't a good idea: If the world were absolutely for sure going to end on Saturday, what would you do differently than you are already doing? Why? Is that really important? Why? That sort of thing.

I don't think I'd do anything differently right now. Not sure if that's a momentary opinion or if I'd say the same in a week. Though it would be nice to touch base with friends to thank them for being part of my life and all that. (A good reminder to myself to do that more often!)

We were forbidden television when I was a kid. I thought it very unfair. But I appreciated it later (like when I was 35... lol).

Tom Otvos wrote: As it stands right now, there is probably a whole lot I would do differently if I only had, say, 3 months to live, or if I were to die on Saturday. I think that it would be unusual for someone to have their decks cleared for something like that.

This is actually a REALLY good thing to think about and motivate your lived life. The specter of death is probably the most best awesomest teacher ever.

A good life basically means being okay with dying in this minute. I think this is a realistic goal. Unusual, but this whole group here is unusual

-- oops, looks like the link I gave (which was a deep link to a book page) expires after a while... I'll try to find a link to Ken McLeod's one minute death meditation...

And some are more unusual than others.

I'm not finding a link to the one minute your dead meditation that I mentioned above. It's in Wake Up to Your Life, including other "awareness of the inevitability and unpredictability of death" meditations.

At least.

Just finished listening... wow, really good/thought provoking.

I finished that book. It was a rare book that I wished were twice as long. Maybe I'll read it again sometime. A couple extra things stuck with me, paraphrasing here:

One is an abbot saying (as he talks to the author about the different deaths of monks in his monastery over the years) that it's all very nice that we (when we are not suffering) are full of wise advice about suffering. But when you sit at the bedside of someone who is suffering terribly it's best to just shut up and keep them company.

Another was several abbots talking about the challenges of dealing with medical treatment, since the monks usually have a very deep spiritual life, and part of their practice is preparing to die well, and certainly includes many years of embracing suffering and using that as a part of practice, so constantly being hauled off to the hospital or having an emergency team run into the room every time they have a worsening of their condition (for instance, they are just a few weeks from death from cancer, but suddenly have a minor stroke) can be a really disruptive thing to the practice. As can, one said, the tendency of medical teams to want to over-sedate people so that they don't feel anything, which means you can't maintain consciousness. So they have to think carefully about the context, and develop relationships with the doctors in the area hospitals so that they can ask for the monk to come home to die in the abbey, or decide together to stop making heroic interventions when the overall condition is 'going to die soon'.

There were also some interesting details about the burials (some orders do not use names on the graves, because their practice of humility includes not wanting any fame or attention after death either. Some orders don't use coffins, again for the sake of spiritual and material poverty. That sort of thing.

And I really liked the whole continuity of the rituals of prayer during the dying, with the monks taking turns sitting vigil at the bedside. It reminded me of a book I have at home from the 1920s or 30s that has the prayers to say at the bedside of a dying person (for family members, regular lay people to use). It's pages and pages of 'guided meditation' in a sense. I might prefer everyone just be quiet. I know a priest who works full time in a Catholic hospital. He wears a beige cassock instead of a black one, because he said people get too terrified when they see the priest coming, thinking "Oh no! They've called the priest! I'm done for!" He found they tended to panic less if he was wearing beige. I know another one who attends people wearing the standard black cassock. He said they find it reassuring, because they know they are in professional hands, as it were.

Death itself doesn't bother me. It's the possibility of suffering along the way.

I think whatever traditional fear of dying I had probably stemmed from all I was identifying with. Who I thought I was, the things I wanted to do, the idea of losing "that". But so much of that has faded away.

It was watching my father die when all my intellectual reading of Buddhism over 20 years or so (no practice though) came into focus and I realised, this is one of the key things the Buddha is supposed to be offering a solution to - a very key suffering. Something clicked and being a scientist I decided in that moment to test the Buddha literally on what he was claiming (as he suggested ) and went hard into a disciplined practice - reading was pointless without the doing. I wasn't scared of death but felt so sad to experience my father suffering in his dying and death. I wasn't that close to him, or so I thought - we were very different people but after his death (particularly over the following year after) and during subsequent years he occasionally appears in dreams, just being there in a neutral to positive perspective - no great message or fireworks display, just a great sense of contentment with him. The thought of death is very unpleasant but it's a thought, not death. I am not really scared of death, more intrigued. Not really looking forward to the pain often associated with it though.

Happy Christmas and Prosperous New Year to you all - been a while since I checked in here.