Mary Oliver: When Death Comes

When Death Comes, by Mary Oliver


When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

Memorials for Gamers

After Michel Koiter died suddenly at age 19, the video game company he and his twin brother René worked for wanted to pay tribute to him.

Blizzard Entertainment art director Samwise Didier, came to [René] with an innovative proposal: He wanted to erect a monument to Michel in World of Warcraft, most likely the first permanent memorial in gaming history. René agreed, and in late 2004, a stone obelisk engraved with Michel’s initials, MK, appeared in World of Warcraft. Known as the Shrine of the Fallen Warrior, it features the body of an orc—Michel’s chosen avatar in the game. In a recent update, Blizzard added an angelic figure known as a “spirit healer” to watch over the obelisk. “It was an epic gesture,” René said.

Slate's Michael Walters tells this story in a moving essay about digital memorials in the world of gaming.

In the past 10 years, gaming companies and individual players alike have endeavored to preserve the legacies of lost players within the games they loved. Across World of Warcraft, EVE Online, Guild Wars 2, and dozens of other large-world massively multiplayer online role-playing games, hundreds of shrines have popped up honoring deceased players. For close friends and family members of players preserved in video games, those memorials offer a way not only to reflect on their loved ones but also on the community that cared for them. A shrine stretches far beyond the digital plot of land it occupies. It reaches into the homes of hundreds of quasi-strangers, bound together by their love for a friend they likely never met in person.

The Medical Pause; Health Care Professionals Acknowledge Death

Health care professionals often see death as a failure. Their job is to keep people alive and well; when a patient dies, they mark the time of death, do the paperwork, and move on to try to save someone else. Jonathan Bartels is a nurse who has developed "the medical pause," a way for health care professionals to acknowledge that a life has ended in a respectful and meaningful manner.

The medical Pause is a practice implemented after the death of a patient. This practice offers closure to both the medical team and the patient. It is a means of transitioning and demarcating the brevity and importance of this moment. Through silence this shared event is able to be honored and marked by a multicultural medical staff. Silence allows individuals to personalize their practice while not imposing onto others. This act is a means of honoring a persons last rite of passage. To bring an element of the sacred back into a profane world of medicine.

Anyone can ask to do this following a code/death. At first it may feel awkward because we are standing in a vulnerable place and asking for a moment of respect. After it is done, it becomes easier to repeat because everyone involved understands how important it is.

“Could we take a moment just to Pause and honor this person in the bed. This was someone who was alive and now has passed away. They were someone who loved and was loved. They were someone’s friend and family member. In our own way and in silence let us stand and take a moment to honor both this person in the bed and all the valiant efforts that were made on their behalf.”

45 seconds to a minute of silence.

“Thank you everyone.”

Grieving at Disney World

No one should ever judge the way people grieve. This poignant essay in Slate by Nicole Chung is about a family that went ahead with a long-planned trip to Disney World after the unexpected death of the children's grandfather.

One of many things I didn’t know about grief is that it doesn’t hit you all at once. After my dad’s death, I kept waiting to mourn. Any time now, I thought. Here we go. But for days, what kept me feeling listless and confused and impatient with everyone around me was more like shock than sorrow....In the end I found my space to begin grieving not at home with my mother, nor at my father’s funeral, but on our first day at the Magic Kingdom. A dear friend of mine happened to be in Orlando at the same time we were because her grandmother, who lived there, had just died. She met us there, and we rode the Dwarf Mine Train with our arms raised, whispered about the astonishing racism of the “It’s a Small World” ride, and watched my enraptured younger daughter meet Belle.

Until then I had been too shell-shocked, or I’d been traveling, or I’d been worried about my mom, or there’d been too many people to talk to and not enough time—but now, in the company of a good friend who was also grieving, I was able to speak for the first time about my messiest feelings and regrets where my father was concerned. The two of us often trailed a few steps behind the rest of my family, talking about complicated families and how death—no matter when or how it occurs—leaves so much open and aching and unresolved. I felt sad, and strangely comforted, and somehow I was managing to have a good time, too. It made me wonder how many other people in the massive crowds around us were also mourning someone or something here, at The Happiest Place on Earth.

Rob Delaney Writes About His Sick Toddler Son

Rob Delaney wanted to write a book about caring for his toddler son who had a brain tumor, to encourage other parents of sick kids.

The reason I’m putting this out there now is that the intended audience for this book was to be my fellow parents of very sick children. They were always so tired and sad, like ghosts, walking the halls of the hospitals, and I wanted them to know someone understood and cared. I’d still like them to know that, so here these few pages are, for them. Or for you.

But I can’t write that book anymore because our family’s story has a different ending than I’d hoped for. Maybe I’ll write a different book in the future, but now my responsibility is to my family and myself as we grieve our beautiful Henry.

A Muslim and a Christian Enter Heaven in "Mr. Andrews" by E.M. Forster

I love this description of two souls, a Christian and a Muslim, ascending to heaven together in "Mr. Andrews" by E.M. Forster, my favorite story about what the afterlife is like:

The two souls floated upward, hand in hand. Mr. Andrews did not speak again, for he was filled with horror at the approaching tragedy. This man, so godless, so lawless, so cruel, so lustful, believed that he would be admitted into Heaven. And into what a heaven—a place full of the crude pleasures of a ruffian’s life on earth! But Mr. Andrews felt neither disgust nor moral indignation. He was only conscious of an immense pity, and his own virtues confronted him not at all. He longed to save the man whose hand he held more tightly, who, he thought, was now holding more tightly on to him. And when he reached the Gate of Heaven, instead of saying,” Can I enter?” as he had intended, he cried out, “Cannot he enter?”

And at the same moment the Turk uttered the same cry. For the same spirit was working in each of them.

From the gateway a voice replied, “Both can enter.” They were filled with joy and pressed forward together.

A Daughter Dies of Cancer

Nearly four years to the day she was diagnosed, her oncologist tells you there’s nothing more he can do.

You take her home and let her live her life. You put your own life on hold so you can drive her to school, to parties and to the performances she loves: She’s a musician, and you live to hear her beautiful voice.

She has one final scan. She’s been struggling for breath. She’s been extremely pale. She’s been getting fevers every night that spike as high as 103. You learn that the tumor near her left lung is now the size of a grapefruit. It’s close to her heart. The oncologist says he’s sorry. He does not schedule any more scans. He does not schedule any more ­follow-ups.

She lives for three months longer. With the help of hospice and palliative care, she is able to stay home. She goes to a final birthday party, meets her friends for a final lunch date. She texts her best friend the night before she dies: “I’ll see you this weekend.”

It is March 22, 2017. The outside world is gray and cold, covered with snow. You and your husband sit beside her in her bedroom and listen to her labored breathing. You tell her you love her. You tell her you’re proud of her. You tell her you’re sorry you couldn’t save her. You tell her it’s okay to go.

She opens her eyes — those big blue eyes you know better than your own — and sighs one last time. Then she’s gone.

Jaqueline Dooley in the Washington Post

Comfort Care Case Study

Hospice Workers Find Peace and Meaning

Michael Ollove writes in the Washington Post writes about hospice workers who find peace and meaning in their work.

It is hard to think of another profession with such constant exposure to dying. Yet, as intense and exhausting as hospice care is, you seldom hear any of the Western Reserve’s doctors, nurses, aides, social workers and bereavement counselors describe the job as grim, sad or dispiriting. Instead, they tend to portray the work as deeply fulfilling, gratifying and, perhaps most counterintuitively, life-affirming. And in working in the presence of imminent death, they all say they have witnessed sights that defy expectation or explanation.

“We see God working here all the time,” said Dee Metzger, 68, a hospice nurse in the Medina Inpatient Hospice Care Center southwest of Cleveland. “All the time.”

The annual turnover rate among employees at Western Reserve is a surprisingly low 12 percent, according to Judy Bartel, the organization’s chief clinical officer. To retain employees, the hospice offers them many outlets to combat burnout and what is called “compassion fatigue.”

...

The hospice caregivers gauge their performance by how they usher their patients to their end. “The most we can do is provide opportunity for our patients to have the best deaths possible for them,” said Dieter, 62, medical director of Western Reserve’s David Simpson Hospice House. “While everyone else is running away from it, we in end-of-life are rushing forward, saying, ‘We know what you’re going through. We want to help.’ ”

Sarah Lyall on Her Mother's Last Days and the Promise She Broke

Sarah Lyall promised to help her mother end her life but when the time came, it did not go the way either of them wanted.  She wrote about it in the New York Times.

I know what I’m supposed to do, because she has told me many times. One of the stories passed down as gospel in our tiny family is about how my late father, a doctor, helped his own mother — my grandmother Cecilia, whom I never met — at the end of her life. Her cancer was unbearable. “So he gave her a big dose of morphine to stop the pain,” my mother has always told my brother and me, as if reaching the end of a fairy tale. “It had the side effect of stopping her heart.”

...

But I am not a trained assassin. I am not a doctor. I am not very brave. I’m just a person who wants to do the most important thing that her mother has ever asked of her. I’m also a resident of New York State, where assisted suicide is illegal.

Plan Your Funeral -- Now

A mortician urges us to acknowledge that death is inevitable and make our wishes known:

Every mortician I know has a bevy of similar horror stories—but they’re probably not the stories you’re imagining. They are not stories about zombies. Our stories are much worse because they actually come true. We can recount in detail the terrifying tales of what goes wrong if you die unexpectedly and your family is unprepared to make your funeral arrangements. I know most of you don’t think you’re going to die, but I’m here with some rough news: Death is the appointment none of us can cancel.

Most important--talk to your family and get the right forms signed:

First and foremost: paperwork! Without a legal document authorizing someone specific to handle your funeral arrangements, there’s an order of priority for people who are authorized to make these decisions for you. Your legal spouse comes first. If you don’t have a spouse, your adult children come next. After that are your parents and then your siblings. In fact, there’s a legal hierarchy that you can follow all the way down to your second cousins, if need be.
Luckily, paperwork is an easy way to supersede the next-of-kin list. You can specify exactly who you want to make your funeral arrangements and honor your wishes in a legal document. The most effective document to accomplish this is called a Durable Power of Attorney for Health Care (DPOAHC). This document also allows for your designated agent to make medical decisions for you, which makes it different from a regular ol’ Durable Power of Attorney. You can have one drawn up with a lawyer or you can simply get one online, but there needs to be an included paragraph that specifies you are also designating your agent the right to control your funeral arrangements.

...