imminence.

If death was something you knew you would face in the near future, let's say 2 weeks, what would your attitude be? Would it be that of rejection and resentment? Or would you want to ask all the questions you had, make amends, and try to experience the things you had wished to experience before your last breath? How would you make your death personally meaningful?

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The following is a story about Old Sarah(*):

     "By far the most dramatic instance of timing and planning was the dying of Old Sarah. About two weeks before her death I received a radio message from Old Sarah summoning me to Arctic Village on a specific day. Nothing like this had happened to me before but I can remember thinking "she intends to die on that day." Dutifully I gathered three of her family in Fort Yukon and flew them to Arctic Village on the day designated. I was right about her intentions but wrong about the date. She had a son in another village and wished me to bring him to Arctic Village. She allowed enough time for me to bring in the last person. It was quite a company of people as was fitting for the undisputed matriarch of both the family and the community.
     "During the morning of the next day she prayed for all the members of her family. At noon we had a great celebration of the Eucharist in a her cabin complete with all the hymns and prayers. Old Sarah loved every minute of it, joined in the prayers and the singing and was quite bright throughout the service. Then we all left and at six in the evening she died. For the next two days the entire village turned out on the business of Sarah's funeral. Some of the women prepared her body and completely cleaned her cabin while other cooked vast quantities of food, much of which Sarah had bought for the occasion, for the workers. The mission house was turned into a carpentry shop for making the coffin and teams of men took turns picking and shoveling a grave in the frozen ground. All the village packed into the church for the service and accompanied the coffin to the graveyard, singing hymns while the grave was filled in with dirt and placing hand-made crepe paper flowers on the mound before the final blessing. Then there was a great feast for all the village. The burial customs were similar to these in all the villages but never before or since in my experience were they planned and shared so much by the one who died. Old Sarah's dying was a priceless gift to all of us."

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     This death was truly a celebration of life, a coming to terms with mortality, and a gathering of people who had known her. When thinking about the services provided to the individuals in our lives that have past what is similar? What is different? Do we let our loved ones die in familiar surroundings with familiar faces? Or do we send them to the sterile machine infested hospital room where they are monitored by strangers with the titles of nurses and doctors? Trying to prolong the inevitable in a lonely unfamiliar space. What favors are we doing them if they are in this lonely environment? A couple extra hours? Days? Would it not be better to let them come to terms with their death in a place they've always known? With the people they love?

     I want responses. What would you want to accomplish? How would you feel? What would your immediate response be? Just think for a few minutes (or longer if you'd like) about all of this.


*This story is an excerpt from: Dying Among Alaskan Indians: A Matter of Choice by Murray L. Trelease from Death The Final Stage of Growth by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross