Approaching the end
John Hargreaves considers how Friends should deal with the approach of death
How do you deal with fast-approaching death – either your own or someone else that you care about? This important question and others were explored at a special weekend retreat at Charney Manor, Oxfordshire.
The experience was unusual in that people normally avoid the whole subject of ‘The End’ and many helpful insights were revealed in the course of the weekend. The facilitators were Barney Rosedale, a former GP, and Barbara Pensom, a former welfare officer; both are trustees at Charney.
We followed the guideline in Advice & query 30: ‘Accepting the fact of death, we are freed to live more fully.’
Practical details were addressed, such as making a will, appointing an executor and writing last wishes. We must leave copies where they will be found, such as with our solicitor or next of kin.
The advice is to involve our family in these wishes. It would be good for them to know and not be surprised at the end. We discussed if children should be involved in our death and attend the funeral. There is a move in some quarters to ‘protect’ children and exclude them from anything bad; but we were advised that they would recover better if they were involved, when their family member could talk them through it. It would also help if they were a witness at the funeral and able to say goodbye to their loved one.
When the end comes, we might not be in any position to direct doctors in our treatment and there are important options to decide: do I want resuscitation, antibiotics fed intravenously or to be put on a ventilator?
Where do we want to die? At the moment fifty-seven per cent of people die in hospital, eighteen per cent at home and the rest in a nursing home or hospice. We could choose the location, particularly when we realised we were near the end of this life.
There is much to assist old age now and to get involved with, including the Men’s Shed movement, which provides tools and space to make things. There are a number of Death Cafes operating that enable people to talk, over cake and coffee, about end of life choices. Speakers are booked from organisations like Age UK and Soul Midwives. Retired doctors also come to talk about the aging of the body. It was noted that we are living much longer nowadays, so we have many more problems with our body. In Biblical times the average life expectancy in the Roman Empire was twenty-eight. The latest figure in the UK is eighty-two years, with the gap between men and women narrowing to only a few years.
In the Middle Ages we died quickly, often of an infection after breaking a bone. In the 1900s tuberculosis was the biggest killer in western Europe and now it’s cancer, heart and lung disease, complicated by dementia.
My interest was to explore where we might go after death: was there life after death and would it be in heaven, part of a great sleep until Jesus returned or is it just a full stop, this life being all there was?
There are many views expressed in the Bible but it is too confusing to be of any real help. The breakthrough was to realise that I did not need to know. We can echo Julian of Norwich: ‘…and all shall be well.’
It is enough to know that Jesus has gone on before us to prepare a place for us where we can be with Him. [John 14: 1-4] He is a rock we can stand on, one that will keep us confident through all the uncertainty and mystery. Jesus would be a welcome Friend in that afterlife. That’s good enough for me.
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