When Your Family Can't Cope With Your Diagnosis

 One reason why your family might not be able to "be there" if you are faced with a terminal illness may have to do with how resilient they are. Their reticence does not mean that they do not care; rather, it reflects their (often unconscious) attitudes about life and about crises. That said, the good news is that people can move from being psychologically fragile toward being psychologically resilient.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joseph-nowinski-phd/the-new-grief-terminal-illness_b_760706.html

Thanks to Megory Anderson at Sacred Dying Foundation for this.

Watching The Creation Of An Ancestor

I’ve just come from sitting vigil with a dying neighbour and her family, staying with her body until the undertakers came, remaining with the family for a little while then coming downstairs into my own flat. The nights have closed in and I feel securely surrounded by the lives above me, around me, all of us doing our living and dying, childrearing, grieving, enforced rites of passage and unconscious day to day existing. I wasn’t with this family as a priestess or Pagan but as a neighbour who came to see how Maria was doing. We all knew she was dying but I arrived at the point where dying became death and was priviledged to be welcomed by her family into that intense process.

What a lot of death there’s been in the last few weeks. Of course, death occurs at every moment but lately I’ve been surrounded by a more than usual number. There’s a feeling of skill and accomplishment  in not being confused, frightened or thrown off balance when confronted with the absolute facts of death; remaining grounded and present creates a particular atmosphere, whether one is robed and formal or in houseworking clothes, not least that the family doesn’t have to be concerned about someone wobbling around while they’re absorbing devastation.

I was going to post the following closer to Samhain but it feels appropriate to do it tonight. Back in 1997 when I ran the Pagan Hospice and Funeral Trust Caitlin Matthews, one of the Trustees, wrote liturgy for what we hoped would become a regular event, Ancestral Remembrance Day. I came across the old papers for the event and found them still relevant. These words later entered Caitlins book, A Celtic Devotional.



Viajan bien, Maria.

Ancestral Remembrance Day

Caitlin Matthews

This format is a suggested one only: it includes ourselves as well as our ancestors an offers opportunities to clear away what is outworn in order that the renewing tide can recycle all burdens that are clogging up our lives. Please use what you will of it, adding or changing details for your personal need and circumstances. The wording has been purposefully planned to be inclusive of all spiritual traditions. You can use this format as a personal celebration or can adapt it for small group celebration, according to need.

You may wish to set up a simple shrine. This might consist of photographs of dead family and friends, some flowers or a plant, a candle or objects from the natural world that feel ancestral to you. Our prayers and ritual patterns need not be formal. Remember your ancestors as human beings, speak to them the way you would if they stood in the room with you now. The most important thing is that we bring love and perhaps forgiveness. Forgiveness is a releasing and letting go from binding ties of fear, anger, frustration and jealousy: allowing such emotions to freely go, we simultaneously release our ancestors and ourselves from complex ancestral bequests which, without forgiveness, tend to cascade from generation to generation.

Finding new ways of celebrating and honouring our ancestors is a challenge but the rewards of such remembrance are far-encompassing. Think of ways in which you can publicly mark your own ancestors: tending family graves and decorating them at Samhain, marking and hanging wreaths on your own trees and bushes in the garden, setting up a votive light in a window, organising small gatherings among neighbours and friends, are a few of the ways we can bring our public spiritual and ancestral celebrations to a wider and more public forum.

Remember, we will be the ancestors to our decendants. Whatever patterns we lay down now will help change attitudes to death and bring the ancestors back to our communities in warming and loving ways.

SONG OF SAMHAIN
I am the hallow-tide of all souls passing
I am the bright releaser of all pain
I am the quickener of the fallen seed case
I am the glance of snow, the strike of rain.
I am the hollow of the winter twilight
I am the hearth-fire and the welcome bread
I am the curtained awning of the pillow
I am unending wisdoms golden thread

PRAYER FOR CHANGE
Weaver of Life, Reciever of Death, you teach us time and eternity and the blessings of change. In the silence of our meeting reveal to me how I also need to change. Sacred silence. Your merciful compassion is my guide.

REMEMBRANCE OF ALL INSPIRERS
I remember all in the realms of light, the dear ones and Holy Ones whose vocation is a template for my own, whose life-ways have opened my own pathway especially. May they enjoy concord, joy and felicity.

PRAYER FOR RELEASE OF BURDENS
As the year falls into darkness I ask my souls’ teacher to help me recognise what is finished, not to manipulate the powers of life and death to keep alive what is really worn out this year. I relinquish the fear and pride which may have restricted the flow of universal vitality into my life. May all the worn out things that I have harboured find their true rest and eternal home.

PRAYER FOR ANCESTRAL RELEASE
Wise Men, Wise Women, Holy Ones of all generations, I call to you to send a blessing upon all who are stuck in the past and walk the spirals of an in-turning maze: may your wisdom lead them by fresh and fruitful pathways to the blessing of the present moment. Please show to me the ancestral patterns which I inherit, the pathways of the maze which I sometimes tread myself. Help me to be aware that these pathways are not my own patterns, that I have my own way to walk.

THANKSGIVING FOR ANCESTRAL WISDOM
I give thanks for the golden links of lore that our ancestors remembered and which spill into our hands: for the treasures of tradition, for the rich heritage of wisdom, for the ancestral experience which I inherit in every cell of my body.

PRAYER FOR SOULS PURPOSE
Glad Giver, True Taker, as the raven stoops upon decay and cleanses the earth, so also do you take to yourself all scattered beings, keeping safe their souls. In the mercy of your silence I stand between life and death. May the life-blood in my veins bring me to perfect mindfulness of my souls purpose.

PRAYER FOR THE PASSING OF THE DEAD
Into the hands of the Grandparents of Life and Death I commit the souls of all who have passed from this life. I remember my own dear ones. May they find peace, clarity and restoration.

CONSIDERATION OF DEATHS PROSPECT
I consider the moment of my own death: may I be well prepared and worthy to enter the Land of the Living. May my life be lived with virtue and integrity, may my soul friends help me prepare for my death, however unlikely it now seems, that my dear ones are not weighted down with cares and responsibilities that I could have spared them. I make frank appraisal of the things which I have left undone which must be completed before I die. I consider also the legacy of wisdom I bequeath to my decendents.

HONOURING OUR LIFE
Glad Giver, True Taker, you hold the threads of life within your hands; both the greatest and the smallest creature is in your care; as I enter the cave of your silence I am remade, as the day is reborn of the night.

CONCLUSION
I light this candle to shine as a beacon for those who go homewards to their death.
May all who have died without anyone to mourne them or bid them farewell

be blessed and released from their wanderings.
May Holy Ones and Wise Ones from the realms of peace guide all wandering souls to their true abode.
May all who have died violently and without opportunity to prepare their passing

be peaceful and enter into the treasury of souls.

I raise this light for all who fear death.
May they learn that the dark is no darkness at all, that the end of this life is but the beginning of another way of living.
The blessing of love, light and life
Be upon the ancestors
Now and forever.

Sacred Dying

Megory Anderson of the Sacred Dying Foundation brought the following piece from the New York Times to the attention of her Facebook friends: Making Sure Patients Don’t Die Alone. The article demonstrates how enlightened young doctors can be but it also throws light onto the way we perceive death and dying: a failure to cure, an opportunity for litigation, perhaps something rather shameful. It is extraordinary that something as basic as someone being around when a person dies makes the news.

Paganism has an uneasy relationship with death. We talk about life, death and rebirth, celebrate Samhain, honour deities Who deal out death as well as Those from Whom life flows knowing that They’re often one and the same. But when it comes to the reality of the end of life we are, unsurprisingly, products of our societies. Fragmented, isolated, we can perform endless ritual and still find ourselves helpless in the determinedly real and unromantic event of death.

So many of our rites of passage are organised to be performed at seasonal gatherings but of course when we begin actively dying we’re unlikely to be able to travel, to be away from the things that make living and sleeping less uncomfortable, to have time between medical appointments or simply to have enough energy. The Pagan dying, like everyone else’s dying, disappear.

It doesn’t help that, like giving birth, dying happens in its own time. I like the analogy of midwifery for both birth and death but there are important differences: if a labouring woman encounters difficulties the midwife needs to be technically skilled because things can go very wrong very quickly. There is nothing to go wrong in the physical processes of death. Many physical symptoms can be relieved, many psychological processes can be facilitated but the outcome will always and inevitably be the same. It can even be (whisper it low) tedious to be with a person who is dying when they just don't die. Birth midwives learn to sit on their hands, be attentive and act swiftly when it's needed. People attending the dying learn to be attentive and do very little, actively.

Dying is a high energy event, it draws people to it, we all want to be in some way connected to this ultimate drama. Being involved with death brings out the worst as well as the best in people perhaps because there’s no set way to ‘do’ it. As the dying person becomes less connected to the everyday world there's a risk that they become a means for others to take a little limelight. All that  unfocused energy around death and dying has to ground somewhere, and when doing nothing is the most important thing to do we can all get frustrated.

You’ll know by now that I trip up over the word ‘Healing’. I don’t like it because it’s routinely abused, particularly so around the dying. The only healing for death is death itself and it’s self evident that this hasn’t been thought through or even thought about by a great majority. People offering candle lighting, prayers, ritual and so on for the ‘healing’ of a person who is actively dying would be horrified to think they were actively working towards someone death, or conversely that they were holding a person unnaturally in a life that is finished.

The Sacred Dying Foundation is one of the premier resources around death and dying, offering ways in which to focus some of that instinctive anxiety and interest, to be helpfully involved. The following is reproduced with kind permission.

10 Tips for Vigiling and Establishing Sacred Presence

Megory Anderson

Reclaim Grace and Dignity for Your Dying Loved One
10 ideas to engage family and friends in “Spiritual Presence” for your loved-one.

1: De-clutter the bedside area. 
  Set the space apart using candles, music, etc., to create a calm, peaceful atmosphere.  This will be the “sacred space” around your dying loved-one.


2: Within this physical sacred space, keep the focus of any conversation on the dying person.   
   Allow intentional conversation with or about the person, but no idle chatter among visitors: keep that outside.

3: Take cues from your loved-one regarding practical matters.
    If there is no indication that s/he would like to discuss or handle practical things, keep these things well away from the sacred space.  If you know the person’s wishes regarding privacy, make sure they are respected.


4: Take turns or assign someone as “door keeper” to shepherd the transition from the outside hubbub to the sacred space.
It can often be helpful to establish a daily or weekly schedule with family members.

5: Take cues from your loved-one regarding not only physical needs, but emotional and spiritual as well.
Don’t take center stage with your own emotions.  While your own needs are certainly valid, if all eyes are on you and the comfort you need, consider stepping outside the sacred space to allow the focus to re-shift to the loved-one.

6: When s/he begins actively dying, the most important element of vigiling is your calm presence.  It is a solemn gift.
To hold this quiet space so your loved-one can transition as easily as possible, use tools that you have already gathered in a “vigiling toolkit”.  Items to include: special objects to hold that have personal or religious meaning (a prayer shawl, a favorite scarf, a rosary), reflective readings or books or prayers, music, candles (flame or battery).  Traditional prayers are often used, but other favorite readings can be appropriate, too.  The idea is to personalize these items for your loved-one.


7: If you are at home, don’t be surprised if family pets want to participate. 
If possible, let them behave naturally: on the bed or on your lap, etc. 


8: Friends/family who can’t physically be there during this time can still be involved from afar.
For example, someone long-distance could be in charge of mass communications, informational emails, etc.  There are many online choices such as candle-lighting websites, creating a Facebook page with updates, and other internet options.


9: Ask absent friends/family to vigil with you at a designated time once or twice daily.
They could do this from anywhere in the world, simply taking a few minutes in shared thought/prayer, listening to music, lighting a candle, etc.

10: Don’t worry about making practical calls immediately after s/he passes.
Spending some time in silence can be profound and meaningful.  Then, consider designating one person to go do practical things while one continues to sit quietly for as long as possible.

© Megory Anderson 2010
www.SacredDying.org