The Presbyterian Outlook

News and Articles from the The Presbyterian Outlook

Register Login Donate Subscribe

Top Search/Contact Area

  • Be A Fan

  • Follow Us

  • Photos

  • Pin It!

    • Home
      • About us
      • Advertise with the Outlook
      • Submissions
    • Presbyterian Hub
      • Editorials
      • Outlook Features
      • Digital Issues
      • Editor’s viewpoints
      • What’s right?
      • Let’s connect
    • News +
      Current Affairs
      • Outlook Reporting
      • Presbyterian News Service
      • Religion News Service
      • News from other sources
    • Ministry + Theology
      • InSights Opinions
      • Benedictory
      • Guest commentary
    • Faith + Culture
      • Book Reviews
      • He/She Said
      • Movie Reviews
    • Ministry Resources
      • Outlook Standard Lessons
      • Outlook Horizons Studies
      • Worship Resources
      • Looking into the lectionary
      • Bulletin Inserts
      • Webinars
      • Hymns
      • Faith Formation Resources
    • Outpost Blog
    • Classifieds
      • Classified advertising

    Dying alone

    February 17, 2017 by The Presbyterian Outlook Leave a Comment

    Guest commentary by Ann Conklin – This piece was written during her participation in a Louisville Institute grant project, “Congregational Life and the Dying: Renewing Resurrection Hope in a Medical Age,” which is facilitated by J. Todd Billings.

    What would it mean for our path of dying to reflect our life in Christ, centered on liturgies of Scripture, prayer and presence with the suffering? Can the church provide an alternative to the cultural liturgies of medicine, tests and never-ending treatment, which so often lead to dying alone in a hospital or care facility?

    Nobody wants to die alone. Nobody wants a beloved friend, family member or fellow congregant to die alone. It was therefore both unfortunate and regrettable that Edward, a member of the congregation I serve as pastor, died alone.

    The congregation steadfastly supported and surrounded Edward in his life. We brought meals, arranged for home health aides, visited him at home and in the hospital, sent cards, called him when he moved away to be with family and visited him upon his return to our area when he, again, became hospitalized. Due to his multiple medical needs, Edward’s family was confronted with what Atul Gwande, in his book “Being Mortal,” starkly notes: “Rarely is there nothing more that doctors can do.”

    Already on dialysis, after being resuscitated multiple times Edward was then artificially ventilated. This series of interventions, in combination with Medicaid health insurance, led to his isolation and, ultimately, his dying alone. You see, there were no facilities in Edward’s home state that would accept someone with these complex medical needs and this type of insurance. He had to be transferred to another facility in a neighboring state.

    Four of us visited Edward in the days leading up to his transfer to a place where he had no family and no friends. We shared memories and even laughter, but there was a heaviness in the room as the unspoken reality of this most likely being our final visit hung in the air.

    We were with Edward during his life, but we were not able to be with him in his death. We had hoped to visit him again in his new location, but this never came to pass. Precisely because of the “heroic” medical efforts to extend Edward’s life, he died alone.

    As Edward’s pastor, I wonder what those final days were like. I wonder if he had anyone with whom to share his long and fanciful stories of life in Ghana before he immigrated to the United States in the early 1980s? I wonder, trained as a nurse in Ghana and then working in respiratory therapy in the U.S., what his experience was in being on the receiving end of this kind of life-sustaining medical care? I wonder if he sensed God’s presence with him and found hope in his belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ?

    Our forbearers in the faith from Erasmus to Luther depict Satan visiting the deathbed to “perform a scrutiny of faith,” (according to Christopher Vogt in “Patience, Compassion, Hope, and the Christian Art of Dying Well”) and many feared a struggle with forgetting God at the end of life. One of the aims of the medieval tradition of ars moriendi (the art of dying) is “fortifying the dying in faithfulness.” This is the role of the faith community and one that is too often extracted from us as more and more people die in hospitals rather than at home, as was the case with Edward.

    Doctors and other medical personnel are beginning to take note of this, and surely the hospice movement has helped to provide an alternative course. However, the church itself needs to reclaim its critical role in the dying process and understand anew the importance of being present with and for the dying.

    The last days and final moments with a loved one or someone with whom you have worshipped alongside are precious and often quite poignant. An opportunity to say goodbye, shed tears together, read Scripture, sing and pray together and offer a final word of comfort, blessing and love is something to be treasured.

    The thought of being alone at the end of one’s life can be terrifying, unearthing other fears such as isolation and exclusion as well as uncertainty about what lies beyond the grave. Whether we acknowledge it or not, the fear of death is very common.

    We find comfort in imagining ourselves surrounded by loved ones, encircled by friends and family in our last days while drifting off peacefully into whatever lies ahead. Indeed, we were created for relationship, in life and in death. Formed in the image of our relational Triune God, we have an inherent need and a deep longing for relationship with God and with others for the full duration of our days.

    This all becomes very real and pressing when faced with one’s mortality. As we find ourselves living in an increasingly medicalized age, we would do well to think about the details of our dying: how, where and with whom we would like to enter into our last days, if given the time and opportunity to make such decisions. Otherwise, we may find ourselves or our loved ones unexpectedly caught up in “the seemingly unstoppable momentum of medical treatment.”

    As Gawande also notes in “Being Mortal,” the issues of how we want to die and how much medical intervention we want to receive have gotten attention lately due to the exorbitant expense of end of life care. Indeed, “in the United States, 25% of all Medicare spending is for the 5% of patients who are in their final year of life, and most of that money goes for care in their last couple of months that is of little apparent benefit.” Research has shown that patients who receive life prolonging treatment such as mechanical ventilation or electrical defibrillation actually experience “substantially worse quality of life in their last week than those who received no such interventions.” Equally significant is that their caregivers were three times as likely to suffer major depression after their loved one’s death.

    As Christians, this is clearly not what we would desire at the end of life. And cost, though important, should not be our central concern.

    We want our final days shaped by Christian liturgies of Scripture, prayer and presence rather than the cultural liturgies of medicine. As those who belong to Christ, we can help cultivate and prioritize these liturgies, rehearsing them in worship and bringing them to the bedside of the dying. When we live well, we are more likely to die well, and “dying well is not possible alone,” says John Witvliet in “Worship Seeking Understanding.” Witvliet, the director of the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship, points out, “Dying is a social act. In the Christian community, one never dies alone (or at least the Christian community should not let this happen.)” The Christian community ought to face death together.

    Though not limited to the church, this is something we as the church have to offer, and it is a gift of grace. We can help people to practice the art of living in preparation to enter into the art of dying. We can help cultivate Christian liturgies of dying to replace the secular and medicalized liturgies of our day. After all, central to our faith is the story of Christ’s death and our hope lies in his resurrection.

    We weren’t able to do this for Edward. My prayer is that we can more often do this for those whom we love and serve as we proclaim the life-giving and hope-filled gospel of Jesus Christ.

    ANN CONKLIN currently serves as pastor at Eastminster Presbyterian Church in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Prior to her call to seminary, she had a career as a physical therapist. Ann and her husband, Peter, have been married for 29 years and enjoy being parents to Lily (20) and Lewis (17).

    Share this...
    Share on Facebook
    Facebook
    Pin on Pinterest
    Pinterest
    Tweet about this on Twitter
    Twitter
    Share on LinkedIn
    Linkedin

    Commentary Tags: More News - Homepage

    Leave a Reply Cancel reply

    You must be logged in to post a comment.

    Related Posts

    • A Czech Visitor Looks at the PC(USA)

      The mission-partner-in-residence, as the job developed for me, is an itinerant, wandering preacher and presenter. In the period of one year I have traveled more than 28,000 miles by air and approximately an additional 2,500 miles by land. I preached, taught and spoke in 14 states in more than 20…

    • The Pathway to Partnership

      However, another significant document was approved at the 212th General Assembly, a policy statement of the Worldwide Ministries Division entitled "Presbyterians Do Mission in Partnership." Partnership is intrinsic to God's trinitarian nature and incarnational mission. We participate in God's mission in partnership with God, with partner churches and agencies around…

    • John 3:16 and the Prodigal: (The Gospel and the Gospel)

      For centuries the Latin tradition has called the famous parable of the compassionate father (i.e., the Prodigal Son) Evangelium in Evangelio (the Gospel within the Gospel). Thus should not "the Gospel" (Luke 15) agree with "the Gospel" (John 3:16)? That is, shouldn’t the summaries of John and Paul agree with…

    Current Issue

    • Feb 22
    • Feb 8
    • January 18
    • Dec 28
    • Subscribe
    • Give a Gift
    • Read Online
    • Most Commented
    • Most Popular
    • GA meeting site in Baltimore to be converted into field hospital A decision may be getting closer about whether to hold the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) – set...
    • Moving Forward Implementation Commission takes administrative action The Moving Forward Implementation Commission voted June 18 to take administrative action in five areas — with some of the...
    • Debate over relationship between San Francisco Theological Seminary and the PC(USA) may rise at General Assembly  When is a historically Presbyterian seminary no longer a "Presbyterian seminary”? That question is on the docket for the 224th General...
    • Churches go back to the future with drive-in services in the time of the coronavirus (RNS) — When it came time to pass the peace Sunday at Pathway Baptist Church, Senior Pastor Mike Donald didn’t...
    • Advent devotions — 2020 (Year B) Advent time: Devotions for the congregation Are you looking for theologically sound, inspiring and affordable Advent devotions for the congregation? The Presbyterian...
    • PC(USA) General Assembly affirms that Black lives matter; pledges to work against systemic racism The 2020 General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) voted overwhelmingly June 26 to approve a resolution declaring that Black...

    Keep the Faith

    Sign Up for Updates and Breaking News in your inbox

    Facebook

    Tweets by presoutlook
    Follow Us

    View Stories From

    • Presbyterian Hub
      • Editorials
      • Outlook Features
      • Digital Issues
      • Calendar Check
      • About People
        • Anniversaries
        • Ordinations
        • Retired
        • Deaths
        • Transitions
      • Archives
    • Faith + Culture
      • Book Reviews
      • Movie Reviews
      • He/She Said
    • Ministry + Theology
      • InSights Opinions
        • For Church Leaders
        • Faith Matters
        • Multichannel Church Report
        • #amen
        • Commentary
        • Benedictory
      • Liturgical Year
        • Advent
        • Lent

    The Latest:

    Warm hearts at a freezing cold Texas camp

    February 26, 2021

    2nd Sunday in Lent — February 28, 2021

    February 26, 2021

    United Methodists reschedule meeting — and decision on splitting — again

    February 25, 2021

  • Tweet With Us
  • Be A Facebook Fan
  • Our World in Photos
  • Pin With Us
  • CONTACT US:

    1 N. 5th St., Suite 500

    Richmond, VA 23219

    T: 800-446-6008F: 804-353-6369

    [email protected]

    Or ▶ Fill Out Our Contact Form

    © Copyright 2021 The Presbyterian Outlook. All Rights Reserved. Privacy Statement. Website Design by Poka Yoke Design

    • About us
    • Presbyterian Hub
    • Ministry Resources
    • Classifieds
    • Advertise with the Outlook
    • Submissions
    7ads6x98y