6 Who Cares About My Demise?
Willa had worried that she would die alone, her husband having passed years earlier and many of their friends having already departed, too. Yet when her time approached, Willa felt relief at her pastor’s visits and the visits and kindnesses of her church friends. She hadn’t been able to make it to church for years, but her church friends still remembered and cared for her. Willa also received the gift of visits from two of her grandchildren, which she hadn’t at all expected. But to Willa, it was the unexpected reappearance of her long-estranged son that most heartened her. When he first showed up, Willa had been wary of his intentions. Yet to Willa’s utter surprise, he had shown more concern and care than anyone. And it meant more to Willa than anything that he remained by her side until her end.
Care
Who cares about your demise may well matter to you. Perhaps it matters to you much more than you think. Few things may be as burdensome as believing that no one cares about your demise. A mark of a sound and good life is to have family members and friends who know you and care for you, enough to be concerned over your health, decline, and impending demise. To know that they might even grieve your passing and miss your presence could be a comfort to you of a strange but important sort. Passing from this world while feeling alone is a burden no one should suffer. We have an intense desire, stronger in some than in others but present in most if not all, to both know others and have others know us. Society brings life. Intimacy brings rejoicing. Isolation brings a sort of death of its own. We need and relish one another’s caring company. Give some thought, then, to who cares about your demise.
Parents
In the natural order of things, our parents predecease us. We are rightfully our parents’ caretakers and companions in their demise. Yet the order of things isn’t always natural. Children sometimes predecease their parents, to their parents’ great regret, pain, and sorrow. If your declining health and the longevity of your parents flips the natural order of things, then you would be well within your rights to expect your parents to care most deeply for you as you approach your demise. The great hope would be that they would be present as much as you wished them to be and that they would be a comfort to you as much as they were able. If you have reason to believe otherwise, then address those reasons as much as you are able. If you owe your parents apologies, then give them promptly, graciously, and generously. If your parents owe you apologies, consider demanding none from them but showing them grace instead on the sore subject. Your grace may win you what you are due, when your demands would deny you not only an apology but their comfort, too. Your impending demise may give you a strength, clarity, and power that they lack, out of which you may be able to give greater gifts than you’d wish to receive.
Spouse
A spouse naturally cares most deeply and intimately for the other spouse in the other spouse’s passing. In the usual order of things, one spouse or the other will pass on first rather than both spouses together, making the surviving spouse first the caretaker and companion, and then the widow. The first spouse to pass has the privilege of receiving the surviving spouse’s care and comfort but the brief burden of knowing that they will leave the surviving spouse behind. The surviving spouse will unfortunately have no spouse to care for them in their own demise, hoping instead to have the aid and comfort of adult children or others. If you are married when approaching your demise, you should naturally expect to have your spouse’s devotion in both care and companionship, however imperfect that care and company may be, depending on your spouse’s abilities and disposition. Treat your spouse with full respect at all times but especially as you approach your demise, including either settling or forgiving any score outstanding between you. Do not bear a dividing grudge to the grave. Don’t burden your spouse with guilt or regrets. Ask for more care and company if you need it, but graciously accept whatever your spouse offers in comfort.
Siblings
You may find yourself blessed with surviving brothers and sisters as you approach your demise. If so, then you should naturally expect to have their concern, expressed from afar if you live well apart and they lack the capacity to travel, and their company if they live close enough and are able to visit. In the usual case, you would not expect a sibling to provide a spouse’s intimate care and company. But siblings can have close relationships, too, and your sibling may wish to show you greater care in the course of your approaching demise than you would have a right to claim or expect. If so, consider accepting it, without unduly burdening your sibling. Even if you and your sibling are not close, your sibling may wish to draw closer than the two of you have been, perhaps to repair or restore what you and your sibling lost long ago. Don’t miss the opportunity to improve your sibling relationships in the course of your approaching demise. Doing so can be an encouragement and comfort to you and gift to them. Your confidence in the transcendent outcome of your passing may be an important marker for your sibling’s own passing, especially if you are an elder sibling or have generally been the wiser.
Children
You may also find yourself blessed with children as you approach your demise. If your children are still young as you approach your demise, whether and how you inform them of your condition and involve them in your care or comfort depends on their ages, maturity, personality, capacity, and best interests. Only discerning parents would truly know what to do and how best to do it. Rely heavily on your surviving spouse’s judgment as to how to inform and involve your minor children, as your impending demise may cloud your own judgment. Their presence, though, can be a tremendous comfort. If you have adult children, they should be more than willing, indeed may feel compelled, to journey with you toward your demise, in whatever capacity they have and you wish to accept from them. Their care may of course include frequent visits but also much more. Your adult child or children may, for instance, serve as your care provider, guardian, conservator, and hold power of attorney for directing your medical care in the event of your incompetence. Permit your adult children to participate in and aid your journey toward your demise as generously as they wish to do so, as long as it helps you along. And hold nothing over them, forgiving them as quickly and thoroughly as you would forgive any other.
Grandchildren
You may also find yourself blessed with grandchildren, as you approach your demise. Your grandchildren are, of course, more likely than your children to be young. If so, depend on their parents, your children and their spouses, to determine whether and how to involve grandchildren in your care and companionship on your journey toward your demise. Grandchildren can be a special comfort both because of their natural tenderness toward grandparents and because they represent your generational future. You may see yourself and your own life in a longer perspective through your grandchildren’s presence and in their eyes. Seeing a great-grandchild or two, even as babies or infants, in your last progress toward your transcendence could be an even greater blessing. Don’t hesitate to ask your adult children to see your grandchildren in your last time, while respecting their wishes as to what you may and must not share as to your condition. Your interest in your grandchildren may also bless your children and grandchildren.
Relatives
Other relatives, such as cousins, nieces, and nephews, and even aunts and uncles if they survive, can also be a blessing on your journey toward transcendence. If your family’s gracious bedside vigil extends beyond your nuclear family, you may gain a broader and deeper perspective on your own life and legacy, set within your larger family bloodline. The visit of two or three cousins can remind you of reunions or other long-past events when your parents or even your grandparents were alive. You may be both renewing your own memories while also renewing memories held by your cousins, nieces, nephews, and other distant relatives. You might also be easing family tensions and restoring family communications among your adult children and their cousins, so that they can continue with your family’s heritage and traditions. When you invite and welcome distant relatives into your journey toward transcendence, you also show a largeness of heart and spirit, and a hope for greater things to come. Your faith and confidence may even plant seeds where none would otherwise fall.
Friends
Including your closer friends in the final leg of your long journey can be appropriate, to the extent that they are willing to show reasonable care, compassion, and concern. Individuals can have different views and feelings about another’s demise. Some might prefer to involve themselves only in the demise of a close family member. If that is the way that your closer friends feel, then respect their wishes and appreciate the friendship that they previously shared. You might, though, reach out to them anyway to thank them for that friendship and let them know what they meant to you. Give no thought to whether they respond in kind or not. Set them free on their own journey. Some friends, though, can be special companions in one’s last days, giving one a fresh and perhaps lighter and more-humorous perspective on one’s own peculiar family relationships.
Co-Workers
Long-time co-workers may also show care, compassion, and concern toward you on your last leg of your journey toward transcendence. You decide whether and how much to welcome their attention. Outside of your family and perhaps a few close friends, you have no obligation to acknowledge the kindnesses of others such as co-workers, especially if your circumstances leave you with limited capacity. Yet co-workers can also be close friends. And you may benefit from having compassionate reminders of what your presence meant to your workplace community. Jobs and careers generally matter little or at least matter a lot less on the final leg of a journey to transcendence, but that may not be your own case. Don’t, though, look to your workplace for any degree of appreciation or affirmation in your last days. You may be due every bit of what you seek, but social conventions do not necessarily recommend or require it, and you wouldn’t want to suffer any perceived affront from its absence.
Community
Your neighbors and broader circle of acquaintances may also wish to show interest, care, and concern over your impending demise. As in the case of co-workers, you need not feel any obligation to accept or respond to their expressions of concern, especially if your capacity is limited. Your acquaintances may just need to express their concern and may not have any expectation that you respond. If you do choose to respond, consider limiting your response to a simple expression of appreciation, which may be all that they would want or expect, unless you have a particularly poignant memory or other kindness you feel compelled to share. Don’t diminish yourself, them, or your relationship or community in any respect. Keep in mind that the dying hold a power over the living that bears tender wielding.
Congregants
Your fellow church members may also wish to share their care and concern. You may especially benefit from accepting and even soliciting the compassionate care of your faith community. Church communities can exhibit special skill and sensitivity in their care for the dying. Churches of any size and longevity generally see regular if not frequent memorials, training their staff and enculturating their membership to exhibit compassion in meaningful ways. Those ways may include delivered meals, home or hospital visits, household care, home modification, and even transport to church, medical appointments, or other special locations. Your fellow church members may periodically relieve your spouse or adult child or children from caring for you, so that they can recover and return refreshed for your continued care. Your church community may not only be willing to fulfill your reasonable requests for care but may also affirmatively desire to do so, out of its own transcendent mission and in honor of your church relationships and service.
Spirit
Whether you have family members, friends, acquaintances, or congregants to care for you in your last steps along your path to transcendence, you can have the company and consolation of transcendence’s own Spirit. The Father sent his Son for your exorbitantly expensive but entirely gracious rescue from the mortality that you see looming. Upon the Son’s resurrection and victory over death, the Son then sent the Spirit for your guidance and consolation. If you don’t know the Spirit, get to know him. Father, Son, and Spirit are three persons in one. When you see the Son, you see the Father. When you embrace the Son, you receive the Spirit. When the Spirit is present with you, you lack no company, even if every family member and friend has left you alone. Your need on the last leg of your journey to transcendence is not for human company but for the Spirit.
Reflection
Whom do you expect to care most about your approaching demise? What is the relationship or event that you and that person share, and that person’s character, that makes you most expect their compassion and concern? If your parents are living as you approach your demise, do you expect them to be capable of sharing their concern? Are you prepared to welcome and embrace it, no matter your relationships? If your spouse is living as you approach your demise, do you expect your spouse to be capable of providing for your care and companionship? If so, how can you facilitate that care and support, while lessening your spouse’s burden? Will you have minor children near as you approach your demise? If so, how do you and your spouse plan to help your children reckon with your condition and demise? Are you and your spouse ready to treat each child differently depending on their age, maturity, personality, and needs? Will you have adult children capable of providing you with care and company on the last leg of your journey toward transcendence? If so, expect to make clear plans for their involvement, to ease your concern and their burden. Will you have grandchildren near as you finish your journey toward transcendence? If so, have their parents, your child and child’s spouse, shared their plans for involving or not involving your grandchildren in visits? Do you have close friends whom you expect to express concern and offer care or companionship? If so, do you know whether you can and should accept their offers? What workplace or community recognition do you expect, and how do you plan on responding, if at all? Will your church offer you care and comfort? Have you communicated with key church acquaintances or staff members yet about your needs and desires? Do you know the Spirit, and if so, will you seek the Spirit’s consolation?
Key Points
Family members and friends may care deeply for you on your journey.
Graciously welcome your parents’ devoted attention if they survive.
Depend on your spouse for care, company, and intimacy in passing.
Welcome your siblings’ concerned attention, restoring relationship.
Respect the best interests of your minor children in your passing.
Depend on your adult children for care and necessary administration.
Welcome the visits of grandchildren as their parents permit it.
Expect expressions of concern from close friends whom you value.
Do not expect co-workers to do more than they alone determine.
Accept expressions of concern from acquaintances only as you are able.
Welcome your church’s sensible and sensitive care and support.
Above all, seek the Spirit’s consolation as all you’ll ever need.