Before We Say Goodbye: Preparing for a Good Death. Ray Simpson
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likely explanation was that there was an unseen, superior Intelligence. He followed his conscience to the edge, and in time became a believer in God.
Nobody can reach to the edge of life itself until their time comes to die. Nonetheless, if we have learned to reach for other edges in our lives, we will surely be more able to reach for the final edge.
I mentioned earlier that Good Pope John XXIII practised imagining he was on his deathbed from his student days. This stood him in good stead. When he was dying of a painful cancer, he refused medication in order to be fully present to the world and to God.
I try to review my life at least once a year. The froth recedes. Important things which have been left undone come to my notice, and I still have time to do something about them.
Here is a way to review your life which was passed on to me. You might want to record or write these things down. Take plenty of time and come back to some of the points if you need to.
* * *
I imagine that today I am to die. I ask for time to be alone, and write down for my friends a sort of testimony.
1 These things in life I haveloved:
tasted:
looked at:
smelled:
heard:
touched:
2 These experiences I have cherished:
3 These persons are enshrined within my heart:
4 These convictions I have lived by:
5 These are the things I have lived for:
6 These insights I have gained in the school of life:
7 These risks I took:
8 These sufferings have matured me:
9 These lessons life has taught me:
10 My life has been shaped by these persons:
occupations:
books:
events:
11 These things I regret about my life:
12 These are my unfulfilled desires:
13 These are my life’s achievements:
I choose an end to this document – a poem (my own or someone else’s), a prayer, a sketch, a picture from a magazine, a Scripture text, or anything else that I judge would be an apt conclusion to my testament. I place or write below the points I have made.
By being present to a loved one who is dying, we are making ourselves familiar with a journey that we, too, will one day make. Sometimes relatives or friends refuse to accept that their loved one is dying, so they don’t talk about it. This means that the dying person is denied the chance to share what they are really feeling. It is a terrible letdown.
We should not tell a dying person what they do not wish to be told, but we can draw out from them what they are feeling, we can recall past experiences, and we can thank them for their friendship.
Farewells can be said in ways other than words. We can hold someone’s hand, stroke their brow, or even ask to wash their body. It is important to be comfortable. For some people, singing old favourites helps to relax them and reminds them of being sung to as a child.
What if you can’t be there at the time of the death or the funeral? You could do any of these things:
• Light a candle.
• Look at a photo and cry or talk to the one you love.
• Write a message on a card.
• Recall stories.
• Say your own prayers.
Some people treat Jesus as a mediator between the person who remains on earth and their loved one who has died. They pour out everything to Jesus and ask him to communicate to the deceased whatever is best for them.
Say goodbye in good time. If possible, don’t leave it until the power of speech or thought recedes. This allows us to be beside loved ones, enjoying the satisfaction of having said what is in our hearts for them. Is this not what we will one day wish for ourselves from others?
No consolation can be so certain and so lasting to you as that softened and manly sorrow which springs up from the memory of the Dead. CHARLES DICKENS
Many questions arise when someone we are close to dies. Are their souls conscious? Do they remember us? Are they still involved in some way in our lives? C.S. Lewis wrote this to a friend whose father had died:
I feel very strongly (and I am not alone in this) that some good comes from the dead to the living in the months or weeks after the death. I think I was much helped by my own father after his death; as if our Lord welcomed the newly dead with the gift of some power to bless those they have left behind … Certainly they often seem just at that time to be very near us. 14
Many religions believe that there are bodiless as well as embodied spirits. Christianity believes in this, and in what it calls ‘the communion of saints’. However, churches in the West from the fourteenth century onwards got in a tangle about how we should relate to holy souls who have died. Catholics added on what their critics thought were superstitious ideas. Protestants, according to their critics, threw out the baby as well as the bathwater by making the role of the dead a no-go area.
Before Christianity divided into these conflicting traditions (and still today in Orthodox, and increasingly again in new Western churches), ‘the communion of saints’ was understood as follows.
Christ is truly divine, truly human, ever living, and the Head of his Body, which is the Church on earth and in heaven – all who have ever been joined to him. All who are joined to Christ have his life and his mind flowing through them. So the Church on earth carries in its prayers the whole Church, on earth and in heaven. And the Church in heaven, like its Head, carries in its heart the whole Church, on earth as well as in heaven, although each does this according to their particular calling.
The Bible indicates that believers who have died are alert and aware, even though they have not yet received what the Bible calls their ‘resurrection body’. For example, in relation to great believers such as Abraham, Jesus says about God, ‘He is not the God of the dead but of the living’ (Luke 20:38). Hebrews 12:22–4 says that we mortals are in the presence, not only of God and of angels, but also of just souls who have been made perfect. It would surely not say this if they were inactive and unaware. Paul was sure he would be alive after his death, saying he desired ‘to depart and be with Christ’ (Philippians 1:23, NRSV). Although, from the point of view of those of us who remain on earth, those who have died are ‘asleep’, this is only a temporary, physical separation.
From the time of Jesus, when the prophets Elijah and Moses appeared to him and three friends on a mountain (see Matthew 17:1–8), and throughout Christian history, certain Christ-like persons have appeared to people living on earth. This is unsolicited, a divine gift, and should not be confused with the practice of summoning up the dead, which is forbidden in the Bible (see Leviticus 19:31;