“I am sorry, we can talk more when you come back next.”
“Have a wonderful break, I can’t wait to hear about your adventure.”
“Next week, I’ll tell you what happened after that.”
The above quotations came from three exceptional people that I had the pleasure of knowing for a brief time. Some I only knew for a few days, while others I got to know for the entirety of my hospice volunteering experience. Those words were the last that I heard from each of them before my break from school. When I returned, they were gone. Now, I will not tell you how hurt I was that I could not complete my conversations with these special people; the sadness attached to loss needs no explanation. But I will say this: It was an absolute pleasure to have the opportunity to be a part of their final chapters. While much of what those people taught me cannot be expressed—for it is felt and experienced—I can do my best to piece together my fragmented thoughts and emotions.
First and foremost, I believe this work is supposed to be hard. The end of our journey here on earth is not always pretty, but it can be beautiful in some moments. A highlight of my time at hospice was making people laugh, which provided a brief departure from the reality of their situation, even if only for a moment. With one amazing woman, such escapes were often interrupted by aggressive coughs, reminding us of the very thing that would inevitably cease her laughter forever. But life is like that. All we ever get are moments, and I believe we must cherish the good ones—the seconds before the cough. Yes, life entails suffering; things are fleeting, impermanent, and usually downright unfair. That is actually the twisted beauty of it. What would our perception of the sunlight’s warmth be if there were no cold and dark corners? One is inappreciable without the other. Life is the same way, in balance with its necessary antithesis. Most of us have heard clichés about how natural death is and that it’s how you live that matters. But, it is one thing to hear and understand the words, and another to know them. Indeed, these people helped me understand by witnessing their experience with death’s approach. They showed me that it really is okay to die. Not every patient I met had such an outlook, but some did. They were tired, ready, and satisfied with the time they’d been given. What a perspective, to so calmly welcome the least understood and most ancient phenomena in human history.
Indeed, these wonderful people showed me that sometimes it’s important to accept what you cannot control and take control of what you can. They chose to decide how they left; for most, that was with greater comfort, dignity, and laughter—even when painful—than would have come with the alternative in pursuit of aggressive treatment. I have nothing but respect and admiration for them, and will always hold their memories dear to me. Perhaps the greatest treasure they revealed to me was that of patience and presence. Far too often, we lose the moments I referenced above. All we ever have is the present moment, and we have the power to make it beautiful and filled with laughter. We can make the coughing worth it.