A Hospice Situation

In October 2015, my sister sent me a video of Dad "sleeping peacefully" after a medical crisis.  I'm so grateful she did, because that recording of Cheyne-Stokes end-of-life breathing was my emergency notice to fly cross-country.  Because of that video, I was able to be at Dad's bedside when he died three days later.  Accompanying him on his last journey was a gift and a privilege for me.  I in turn was accompanied in my vigil by an experienced guide: a hospice nurse.

Many metaphors have been offered for climate crisis.  The one that works best for me is hospice.   Our culture, and much of the life on our planet, is in a hospice situation.
We do not know the full extent or the timing, but the scale and inevitability make a the end of a human life a helpful metaphor.  I am have participated in hospice and end-of-life care as a volunteer and as a pastor.  My service with people who are receiving hospice care has taught me the value of facing death with knowledgable guides in order to live well.

Facing death is not a thing my culture does.  A typical scenario has dying people and their families growing frantic and suffering and grasping for Hail Mary cures.  Meanwhile, medical professionals  are ducking the hard work of explaining that the person is going to die in a few weeks or months.  Or perhaps these healers are unable to admit to themselves that death is coming.  Finally signs of active death set in: organ failure, or loss of consciousness, or Cheyne-Stokes breathing.  Hospice services may be called in for the last days of life– which are useful, but could have done so much more.  Opportunities to offer care to the whole person with dignity, to find completion in relationships, and to greatly ease suffering are all lost when the reality of death is not faced before a person begins actively dying.  Hospice even prolongs life.  Hospice care started before the final crisis leading to death can prolong life by a couple of months on average for some common diagnoses.

My role in hospice care has been relational and spiritual, not medical.  My calm presence helps assure the person and their friends and family that death is bearable; death is a part of life.  Helping the person identify how they can make the best of the time they have is a great privilege.  Being a witness and a good listener allows people to grieve and to make sense of their experience.  A little sound psychology/ theology often brings relief from fear.  Together we can identify beliefs and rituals that bring dignity, comfort, and even transcendence.  And yes, it is not uncommon for people near death to see loved ones who have preceded them in death.  It is common for them to talk of going home.

You can't make someone face their death before they're ready.  That is a helpful reminder for me that it's not my job to convince anyone of climate collapse.  A hospice approach without the terminal diagnosis, and with the option of choosing treatments meant to cure, is called palliative care.  So if you believe that a "cure" to climate collapse is possible, you might prefer palliative care for climate crisis.  Know that a focus on "fighting the disease" often comes at the cost of the what's left of a person's comfort and dignity.  Extreme remedies can be torture to endure.  The need to "win" sets up a false hope that denies both the reality of loss and the value of life in the present.  Palliative care allows the person to decide which treatments they are willing to endure, weighing quality of life over quantity, and does not regard withdrawal of treatment as failure.

People are uncomfortable not knowing how long they have to live.  Having admitted death is coming, sometimes they are in a hurry to get it over with.  So too with some people who have realized the climate crisis.  They jump right to "near term human extinction," just as some people attempt to schedule their deaths.  But uncertainty is part of the package.

The dying process can sometimes be rough, but it can be made a lot more dignified and comfortable with skilled and compassionate care.  I am trying to figure out how I can apply this knowledge, and my spiritual skills, to ease the fear and suffering that people experience facing the collapse of the climate and the loss of ways of life that are becoming insupportable.  In simple analogy, I can be an experienced guide for the end-of-life-as-we-know-it:

• I can be a non-anxious presence, helping to assure people that climate tragedy can be named and faced.
• I can make the best of the time I have, living my values mindfully, and support others to do the same.
• I can be a witness and a good listener, to allow people to grieve and make sense of their experience.
• I can offer sound psychology/theology that invites people to release guilt and blame, to choose compassion for themselves and others, and to find meaning in their circumstances.
• I can help people identify beliefs and rituals that bring dignity, comfort, and transcendence– not only after death but acknowledgement of the beauty and sacredness of all life.

I don't know what this looks like.  It's all new.  But a metaphor helps.  Our climate, and life as we know it, are in a hospice situation.

Photo by Glen Jackson on Unsplash.