A Quote …

Last month I got to spent a lot of time watching someone enter eternity. For several months he layed in bed at the hospital, receiving treatments, until they decided there was nothing else they could do to help him, so they sent him home to die. Not only did I get to watch Steve as he prepared to die, I watched his family watch him. There is something wonderful and disturbing at the same time about the process. Death truly is part of life. It is the part that those left behind hate the most.

My brother and I were just listening to that song yesterday and commenting about it. We think it’s such a terrific song full of brilliant lyrics.

We should totally dye our hair tonight!

The album that I listened to several times during the time my friend was leaving us was “A Collision” by The David Crowder Band. At first I just was listening to it because of how unique it sounded. Very much like a soundtrack with different stuff all mixed in for flavor. Then about the third time through, the lyrics just hit me. WHAMMO! “This is about leaving earth”.

I haven’t heard the song so I am strictly responding to the quote. I watched a friend die a few years back. She had cancer. She didn’t want to be alone and so a few of us took shifts to be with her at the hospital at all times. It truely is an act of love. If it were peaceful and quiet it may have been a different experience, but this was violent and agonizing. It changed my fantasy that God would not allow horrible pain in the ones he was bringing home. It grew me up and gave me a “questioning awe” about suffering.

So if you can’t watch someone die??? Or even see them once they’re dead?

I had such a hard time when my grandma was dying. I went home to Tulsa for her 63rd birthday party and she passed away the day after her birthday. She wanted to hold Max while she slept so I put him on the couch with her. As I leaned down to get Max I gave her a kiss and told her I would see her tomorrow. I knew as soon as the words left my mouth I wouldn’t see her again. The next morning my mom called to say she died. I was so glad I wasn’t there when she died. And have felt badly about that.

I’ve watched Max at points where I thought for sure he wouldn’t make it through the night. I stayed up all night and prayed for God to take him, to stop the suffering…but he didn’t…and I’m so glad He didn’t answer that prayer with what I was asking.

So what was the difference? Why could I not stand the thought of watching my grandma die, but I could stand by and watch the most precious thing in the world to me drift away?

Was it the sureness that grandma’s cancer was going to take her? That maybe a miracle would happen to Max?

I have mostly questions about life and death.

Ya, Deana. Questions for me to. I didnt’ want to be there. I did it only because she asked. I wasn’t actually there when she died. But seeing the “dying” was frightening. I wonder if it is harder on the ones watching death than the ones actually dying. I can’t imagin what you go through with your precious Max.

I don’t get it. I watched my grandma die when I was ten. I watched unable to do anything. I waited 15 agonizing minutes before the ambulance arrived. It was too late. So Tina, what has any of that got to do with love?

Hi Dave,
I think that a 10 year old has little capacity to do much else than feel helpless. When someone you love is in the hospital, or in a home, sick and dying, I think that the kindest thing one can do is to be with them. We may stare at our shoes and watch the clock, but to be with them to help them in THEIR fear is Love.

I recently read a wonderful book by Shane Claiborne called “Irristable Revolution.” In it he writes about a summer spent with Mother Theresa that is helpful… “I fell in love with the “Home for the Destitute Dying “and spent most days there. I helped folks eat, massaged muscles, gave baths, sang, and laughed. Each day folks would die, and each day we would go out onto the streets and bring in new people. The goal was not to keep people alive (we had very little supplies to do that), but to allow people to die with dignity, with someone loving them, singing, laughing, so they were not alone. Sometimes folks with medical training would come by and be overwhelmed with frustration because we had such scarce medical supplies, and the Sisters would explain that our goal was to help people die well. That sounds good, but it was the beginning of many years of struggle I would have between efficiency and faithfulness.”

Below is the lyrics to the rest of the Death Cab for Cutie song to help with context.

And it came to me then that every plan
Is a tiny prayer to father time
As I stared at my shoes in the ICU
That reeked of piss and 409
And I rationed my breaths as I said to myself
That I’ve already taken too much today
As each descending peak on the LCD
Took you a little farther away from me
Away from me

Amongst the vending machines and year-old magazines
In a place where we only say goodbye
It stung like a violent wind that our memories depend
On a faulty camera in our minds
And I knew that you were a truth I would rather lose
Than to have never lain beside at all
And I looked around at all the eyes on the ground
As the TV entertained itself

‘Cause there’s no comfort in the waiting room
Just nervous pacers bracing for bad news
And then the nurse comes ‘round and everyone lift their heads
But I’m thinking of what Sarah said
That love is watching someone die

So who’s gonna watch you die?

By the way, I got the song from iTunes… it is very profound and beautiful.

hmm, who will love enough to watch me die. Who would I dare ask to do so.

Thanks for the comments, D. The illustration of Mother Theresa makes a little more sense. I think I can see the point being made. Your first comment on this post illustrates as much. But to define love by watching someone die? I really don’t get that. For someone like me who daydreams of saving people in peril who have no idea how close they came to being wiped out (or even those who do), watching someone die has more a ring of apathy than love. So the context of the song helped.

Hopefully people willing to watch me die are those whose lives I’ve saved.