Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Receiving help

A young woman has written to me because her father just died and her mother has a very serious stage 4 cancer. She does not know what to say to people when they ask if there is anything they can do to help. She wonders if they are serious in their request as at times it feels very shallow. It seems they don't know what to say because it is so tragic, so they say "can I help", but it doesn't feel very sincere. What does a person do in a situation like this?

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

The main article of Time Magazine this week is called, "How to Die", by Joe Klein. In this article he writes about his parents death and how he felt while caring for them. Even though he is a Time writer, Washington correspondent and many other lofty positions, he felt lonely, frustrated and powerless at times in caring for them. However he also felt richly blessed by being able to be with them on a daily basis in their dying experience. These are feelings that are normal for whoever is caring for a dying person. In this blog I want to give support to all of these feelings, and especially bring forth the blessings of being with a dying person.

In our book, "A Mother's Final Gift", our family of five cared for my mother in the last year of her life. We all felt at times lonely in our experience of caring for her, powerless and frustrated over the changes that came with her decline but mostly we felt an enormous blessing for the privilege of being able to be with her. All of our feelings need to be accepted and honored if we are to truly be able to be with a dying person. Being with a person who is dying can be a positive life changing experience and is worth all of the hardship and personal pain. It is a chance at personal growth that is hard to find in any other situation in life.