The Circle of Life, Part 1

This week and next, I’d like to use this space to share some thoughts about the apparent endpoints of life: birth and death.  I should forewarn you that I’m not an overly sentimental person.  Years ago, I remember my mother rushing to remove a dead bird from the porch, fearing that it would be eaten.  “Why?” I asked — “It’s the circle of life, you know.”  This probably came as no surprise to her, as I had once asked her if I could dissect my parakeet after I found it dead on the bottom of the cage (her answer: “No”).  So it would be hard for me to start gushing about how both the beginning and end of life are miraculous, transcendent experiences (even though I think that they are).  Instead, I’ll just take some time this week and next to comment on some of the similarities and differences that I have noticed.  To dissect them, if you will 🙂

I have a confession to make: I’ve never actually witnessed a death.  I’ve seen people moments before they die, and I have seen them moments afterward.  But I haven’t actually been there during.  I’m far from being a hospice veteran, and I’m sure at some point I will be there when it happens. But even for our nurses, who tend to have much more hands-on time with the patient than the rest of us, it sometimes takes a while before they witness a death.  Because we visit people at their homes, we aren’t there all of the time.  Usually families call us as the patient is starting to enter the dying process. We make sure they are comfortable, and then we leave them to it (unless there is a need for us to stay).  And then the nurse and possibly the social worker or chaplain will come after it’s all over to pronounce the death and provide comfort.

Still, though, given my line of work I have a pretty good idea of what takes place during death, and a very good idea of what happens before and after (which I assume is why you’re bothering to read this).

Up until a few weeks ago, I felt that my knowledge regarding the beginnings of life was pretty deficient, despite having given birth to two children myself.  When you are the one giving birth, you can get pretty distracted.  In my case, our first daughter was born via an unplanned C-section. I was very drugged up, and didn’t know that she was out of me until my husband showed her to me. Apparently, I had given birth. Or, that’s what they told me, anyway. As I said, I felt like my education about the start of life was incomplete.  (In case you’re wondering, daughter #2 was a VBAC–you can look it up–but, still, I couldn’t really see anything).

So, when my dear friend, let’s call her B, was gearing up to deliver her third child and she asked me to be there for her birth, I jumped at the chance.  I was honored to be asked to support her, and I was also excited to get to bear witness to this miraculous event.  I wondered how the beginning of life would compare to what I am now more familiar with: the end of it.  I hoped the experience would somehow lead to another Elton John -inspired blog post title.  As you can see above, it did.

I won’t go into too many details of B’s experience here.  To set the scene, however,  I will say that, fortunately, it went incredibly smoothly.   Everyone was healthy and it went very well.  That baby just flew out of her and it was, in every sense of the word, awesome. Did it seem miraculous?  Absolutely.  So, it was all good, and the next day I got to hold her little girl for over an hour. So ,as far as I’m concerned, it was great.

I love babies.

Anyway, on to the business at hand. Being in the hospital with B was, of course, very different than visiting the dying.  The three of us–her, me, and Daddy– sat around chatting amiably,  looking forward to what was to come.  On my way out to pick up food I got into the elevator with two women who marveled at how much nicer our lobby was than the floor that they were on.  I explained that it was the maternity ward, and they looked at each other and paused.  They were definitely not on the maternity ward, they said slowly.  I was jostled out of my good mood by the realization that our floor was probably the only consistently happy one in the entire hospital.  People only go to the hospital if they are sick or they are pregnant.  Fortunately, we were in the latter category.  The other people on the elevator were not.

Yet while sadness is always present at deaths, you might be surprised at how much happiness can be found there, too.  (Please remember that I am only talking about deaths in hospice–anticipated deaths.  I can’t speak to sudden, unexpected deaths.  Those, I would imagine, are very different).   There can be relief that the suffering has ended.  But often times there is also celebration for the life that the person has lived.  I do tear up in my job, but it might not be for the reasons that one would expect.  I usually cry because I am witnessing such beauty and love (okay, maybe I’m a little sentimental).   I have entered many homes where the patient is simply enveloped in love.  I cannot imagine a better way to end my time on earth than to be comfortable, peaceful, and surrounded by people who adore me.  It really doesn’t seem like it can get better than that.  And when I see those scenes, and I see them often, I cannot express how beautiful they are.  Can a death be as beautiful as a birth?  Well, maybe.  Different, of course.  But still beautiful.

It’s also not usually as messy. We don’t see trauma victims in hospice, and while sometimes our deaths are messy, they aren’t always.  Births are always messy.

Really messy.

Births are also a lot noisier.  First the noise comes from the mother (though my friend B was very quiet and polite), and then it comes from the baby.  I haven’t quite figured out when babies quiet down.  Mine haven’t.

Births are noisy, joyful occasions. Deaths are usually hushed affairs.  Part of that, of course, is because they are often so sad.   They are both very real experiences: at their most basic level, they are the two things that life is made of, and neither event is for the feint of  heart.  But one of the reasons that I love my job is that I now know that with the sadness can also come great beauty.  And that is almost enough to make a gal turn sentimental.

I will probably get even more sentimental as I continue on this topic next week.  Brace yourself.