Facing Mortality

[chansen]

I somehow knew I'd get a response like that from you chansen

I'm consistent. Just like I remember what Berserk/Mystic is like even when everyone else forgets and needs Mystic to remind them.

 

[Luce NDs]

The drive to win allows all kinds of strange and dark attributes to humanity ...

 

[BetteTheRed]

I am curiously uncompetitive in life, even intellectually. I've usually got good marks in classes, but they didn't motivate me. "Getting something" motivates me. I love it when I've been throwing a book against a wall over a concept for hours/days/whatever, then suddenly it "aha"s me. It's almost as good as an orgasm. I want to find the "right" answer, and can be quite argumentative when I think I have a "right-er" answer than you. I have never had any interest in success in any sort of "career" path, and the results were predictably mediocre. I probably should have been a teacher, but that's hindsight, and my track record with children not my own is not stellar; children generally think I'm a bit strange.

 

[Luce NDs]

STRANGE ... possibly causes arising curiosity in a faction!

Perhap snot in case of tacky conditions ... mighty chon dreal things!

 

[Mendalla]

So what do you think?

How do you understand death and mortality?

Have your views changed with age, experience, and so on?

Do you think they will change later?

@Mystic , these were the original questions behind this thread and I am not sure that you have ever addressed them in your posts. There's also a video in the OP that prompted it.

And, yes, even @chansen did more or less address them upthread.

 

[Redbaron]

@chansen and @Mystic ,
I have moved two posts, one from each of you, to the 'Miracles' thread, where they belong. The 2 posts in question did not address the theme of this thread, about facing mortality. We would appreciate it if you would keep your exchanges about prayer groups, healing, and evidence (or lack of it) to that thread, please and thank you.

 

[Luce NDs]

Thus mystical movement in song as hung there ...

 

[chansen]

@chansen and @Mystic ,
I have moved two posts, one from each of you, to the 'Miracles' thread, where they belong. The 2 posts in question did not address the theme of this thread, about facing mortality. We would appreciate it if you would keep your exchanges about prayer groups, healing, and evidence (or lack of it) to that thread, please and thank you.

That's fair. No worries.

 

[Mystic]

Mendalla: "Have your views changed with age, experience, and so on?"

As a minister, I have performed innumerable funeral and memorial services and made sure I created the best possible service to launch the bereaved on as healthy a grief process as possible. People later thanked me for my empathy and my efforts to make the sanctuary a modern art gallery of photos and memorabilia for their loved one. I assumed that my close encounter with death, often holding the hand of the dying as they slipped away, would be invaluable for coping with the death of my own parents. I was wrong!

Dad was my Mom's caregiver. Her mind and mobility were greatly affected by a series of strokes and she was helpless without Dad. So imagine my horror when I was awakened by my brother's 2 AM call to tell me that Dad had experienced a ruptured artery and wasn't expected to survive until morning. Providentially, right before he fell to the floor, my cousin Dolores dropped by to make sure they were all right and she stayed with Mom until my brother and I could get to Kelowna. Dad died in November and I felt intense remorse that I had not called him mcu in recent months and had cancelled at planned visit that Fall because I was badly burned out from my busy pastoral ministry.

Both my brother and I had a psychologically convincing lucid dream in which at around the same time we were both aware of Dad's loving presence, though he didn't speak to either of us. Both dreams were set just outside Winnipeg's Via train depot. My brother found himself in the giant warehouse by the depot where he powerfully sensed Dad's loving presence. Mine occurred as Dad and I were walking outside this depot and then continued walking down St. Mary's Road. What started as an ordinary dream suddenly became lucid as I realized I was lying in bed and that this really was Dad! He was experiencing me as his little boy again and picked me up in his arms, an act that made me uncomfortable in mu dream. My brother's dream was also lucid. The relative simultaneity of our dreams struck us both as beyond coincidence. As a doctor, my brother had previously dismissed such afterdeath contact as illusory, but his lucid dream of Dad changed is mind. I am often haunted by the question of whether my contact was merely an expression of wishful thinking. I have since had a dream of Dad conversing with me, but when I awakened, I knew it was just a dream. It lacked the psychological certainty of my lucid dream.

The worst moment in my life was my deathbed vigil in Mom's nursing home. Her strokes had affected her mind so that she didn't even realize that the corpse in the coffin was that of my Dad! She was virtually deaf and so could not hear people talking to her. She was basically warehoused in that Kelowna nursing home. When I had visited her previously in the nursing home, I had to shout to get her to understand me. I showed her a large photo album of Dad and my family, but she didn't seem to recognize them. At her deathbed, I poured out my heart, expressing my love to her as I held her hand, but didn't get the hoped for squeeze of acknowledgement. Attending nurses reminded me of what I used to say to the bereaved, that hearing is the last sense lost by the dying and that Mom could hear me. Sadly, I was not convinced and that doubt tore me up so much that I had to leave for a couple of hours before returning. Thankfully, she died when I left for my hotel. Mom had always warned us never to put her in a nursing home, but we had no choice. My brother and I performed the memorial service in the funeral home. It saddens me that my faith did nothing to ease my grief as Mom died.

 

[BetteTheRed]

I find that deathbed moments of appropriately aged parents are peaceful, and strangely unique. The "about to die" often seem to have distinct preferences as to whom they would like to die in the presence of.

My Dad waited until my Mom had left his hospital room. She nipped out for a cigarette, I was reading to him, as I did, often/always, my middle sister was holding his hand. My Mom waited until everyone but me was gone (she slipped away quietly from kidney failure). We were pretty cool together. The girls were long gone, I was pretty sure it was going to be that night. She was really calm; just needed some moisture on her lips to be comfortable; she slipped away quietly.

So, yeah, people are okay with dying around me. Maybe I should pursue a final vocation as a death doula.