I wrote this article on death and dying for a blog that Mandy had mentioned was accepting articles. She helped me a ton and edited it… and then I missed the deadline to submit it. Sorry Mandy. 
But I thought I’d post it now for you…
The first time I watched a man die I was 18. I was wearing bright green flip-flops. They were too slippery for the stone floors of Kalighat, Mother Teresa’s Home for the Dying. He was in a bed by the kitchen. He had a bed sore that was so deep you could see the white of his bones on his back. I didn’t know what it was; it made me feel sick when I saw it as I walked past trying to find something to do. I was wearing one of those rubber aprons they give you over top of my linen pants and t-shirt. I hurried past him, one of many volunteers trying to understand death by creating busyness in the face of suffering.
I could tell he was dying, I could hear his breathing change. I started to wash my hands. I could hear him taking his last breaths. I wanted to sit beside him. I was too afraid. I kept washing and washing my hands. While I was washing my hands, talking myself into sitting with this man, he took a final breath and died.
A few minutes later, a priest and a sister came and prayed over his body. I walked away and later cried in the chapel by myself.
When I was 20, I touched my first dead body. I worked in a long-term care facility in Michigan. I bathed elderly people and fed them and sat with them while they used the toilet. I changed briefs, thousands of briefs. I cleaned up vomit, took blood pressures, colored pictures, and laughed with residents who became a kind of family to me. One day, one of my residents passed away. Another aide and I cleaned her body carefully. We dressed her and washed her hair, her arms, her feet. We wanted to make her beautiful so that her family could see her and remember what she’d looked like before she was someone that they didn’t recognize them. She’d been moaning and shouting words we couldn’t understand for the months I’d worked there. A nurse said she’d been like that for years. When she died, her body relaxed. Her arms that had been contorted in a position like she was hugging an invisible person straightened out, and her face was calm and peaceful.
I wasn’t scared of death this time. I was cleaning the body of Jesus. I was preparing him the way that Mary, his mother, had done so many years ago.
Each Sunday I listen to the priest bless the Eucharist: Jesus before us. As I bow my head, the priest lifts the elements—the bread and wine. I can hear his words: “Before he was given up to death, a death he freely accepted, he took bread and gave you thanks…” Every Mass these words speak deeply my soul. There are so many layers to the obedience of Christ. He was obedient to life as a human, he became our word made flesh and lived among us. He was obedient to the manner of his death and the suffering he found on the cross, as the priest says during Mass. We enter into these obediences in our lives: the life lived for others, the daily spiritual and emotional deaths we have to experience to know new life in Christ.
There is another layer, though, of this death he freely accepted. In becoming human, Jesus was obedient to his mortality. He, in full awareness, chose to experience of the fear of death that comes with being human. He freely accepted this part of himself, the fact that he would die. I too am called to freely accept my own mortality and thus enter into the Paschal mystery of the suffering, death and resurrection of Christ.
In Michigan, long-term care is the most highly regulated industry, more so even than nuclear power. Life in a long-term care facility is regulated down to the number of folds in the washcloth you use to clean the body of the person in your care. Care has become regulation-centered rather than resident-centered. It’s difficult and exhausting and thankless. Still, every week I watched men and women love the residents they cared for. I never saw a single resident mistreated in nearly three years. There is something about the presence of the elderly that invites you to love them.
The elderly have become like children again. As people age, they become aware of their own dependence on others. We can lie to ourselves for a long time, convinced that we don’t need anyone or anything else. Part of freely accepting our own death is accepting our need for each other. Children have no shame about needing other people, and neither do those who are elderly. Jesus said, “Let the children alone, don’t prevent them from coming to me. God’s kingdom is made up of people like these.” (Mt 13:13-15, The Message) The kingdom is made up of people freely accepting their own needs, people like the men and women who die in peace at Kalighat or those living in long-term care facilities in the US.
I often wondered at how rarely families visited the nursing home I worked at, especially if their loved one had dementia or Alzheimer’s. I didn’t understand how these people who were so beautiful and peaceful were avoided. Eventually I began to think about what it would be like to have my own grandma unable to remember my face, our inside jokes, or how to make her good Irish coffee. Alzheimer’s is the sixth leading cause of death in the United States (Alzheimers.org), but we’re afraid to talk about the fact that someday we too may forget our own names or watch each other forget our stories. There is a suffering we know in loving other people, knowing that they too will someday suffer and die. We will lose everyone we love.
After the priest blesses the bread, we sing, “When we eat this bread and we drink this cup, we proclaim your death, Lord Jesus, until you come again in glory.” The acceptance of our mortality allows us to fully enter into the Eucharist. If there was no cross, there would be no new resurrection, and without recognizing our own mortality in our human bodies, we can’t rejoice over the life we will have in heaven. In Catholic funeral rites, the body of the deceased is present at the funeral mass, and the community receives the Eucharist that once fed their friend and now strengthens them, giving them hope of the mercy of God. Perhaps by facing death with all our senses—the smell of incense, the sight of the body, the taste of the Eucharistic wine—we’ll be able to know more fully life here on earth and later in heaven.
Now I’m 23, and I don’t know much about life, but I’ve learned a little more about death and losing family. When I go back to the care facility and visit the floors I used to work on, most of the residents have passed away. They became more and more like children until they were welcomed into the arms of Jesus who always calls us toward himself.
Before we greet each other and then receive the Eucharist, the priest prays one final prayer: “Welcome into your kingdom our departed brothers and sisters, and all who have left this world in your friendship. We hope to enjoy forever the vision of your glory, through Christ our Lord, from whom all good things come… Amen.”
