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Call the (Death) Midwife!

Man facing away, talking on cell phone

I had a calculus teacher regularly proclaim there were three unavoidable things in life: Pythagorean theorem, taxes and death. Interestingly, he always listed them in the opposite order, probably for math related dramatic emphasis. 

If Mr G was right, and let’s face it, evidence including property tax bills, my child’s grade 10 math homework and the local newspaper obituary section all support this assessment, how do we shift how we approach death and dying? How do we change the narrative and make preparing for death part of living? What hope do we have in a society where the financial gains of corporations and the “we can cure-treat-solve everything if you fight hard enough” mentality are engrained and accepted throughout society?

To die is perceived as “losing” the fight. To have a patient die suggests a doctor has “failed” to save them. No doctor wants to be thought of as a “loser” and certainly no doctor and likely no patient wants to fail. 

So how then do we approach death in a healthy wholesome heart-centered way?

Enter the death doula. 

Just as a birth and pregnancy midwife helps transition a state of life, so too does a death doula. Other titles include End of Life Doula, End of Life Consultant, and Death Midwife all of which are premised on the idea and privilege of companioning individuals through their end of life journey, the transition from one state of being into another. 

We are called into this work. It is a sacred time and sacred space. It can be heart wrenching and beautiful and heart-wrenchingly beautiful. 

From the point of terminal diagnosis or advanced age, through death, the grief journey beyond and every possible step in between, death doulas walk alongside individuals and their caregivers with a desire to create and hold this sacred space. Space where it is safe to talk about death and dying. Space where all emotions and experiences are welcomed and encouraged. Space where death is part of life not a separate step to be feared, maligned or avoided. 

It can be space where regrets and reconciliation are explored, where plans are made for ritual, legacy and celebration and where the life lived is remembered and life lost is lamented. 

In all of these, the death doula is companion, witness, advocate and presence.

We are all going to die. Our loved ones are all going to die. The key question is, how do we want the experience of death to unfold?

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The World Forever Changed

large tree, boom truck, workers, wood chipper on a blue sky day

This happened today. This huge beautiful tree has been growing here from long before we could see it from our living room window. It should have been able to grow for a century more but for the emerald ash borer.

The process of portioning, removing and mulching the branches with the shuffling of trucks, loaders and workers was like watching a choreographed dance. The soundtrack complete with layers of diesel engines, industrial chippers and two stroke engines.

The smell of sawdust usually activates a sense of comfort and familiarity from childhood winters in the bush harvesting for wood fired heat. The crunch of snow under foot, the crash of felled trees, the chattering of kids and dads at work and the feel of damp, snow crusted mittens. And always that scent of wood mixed with the fuel-oil exhaust of chainsaws.

Somehow this is different. While many would shrug and say “It’s a tree. Trees die.” My aching heart knows the truth as do the tears rising just under the surface. There is grief in this loss. Grief over a tangible loss of a living thing. Grief over intangible losses of all the things this particular living thing represents. Grief over the complex layers of things that are only tangentially related. 

Things like climate change, loss of habitat, loss of shade and a primary navigation landmark. Things like the globalization of commerce directly responsible for the arrival of the emerald ash borer and the swath of arboreal decay in its wake. The loss of comfort and a familiar view out the window every morning and evening, birds flitting around the branches, nesting in the nooks, perching on the tips. 

There is a small glitter in this with a pile of mulch and stack of lumber the crew generously delivered to our back yard, some meaning from the death. But they’ll need to be held in a balance for a time while we adjust to the new view and all it represents.

This is what death is like. The world – my world – is forever changed.

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The Little Things

“It was a series of micro griefs” she replied.

I was curious what had driven my colleague into their wilderness time.

“That and a friend’s faith being different than I thought. Their perspective sent my faith off the rails. I didn’t know what to believe any more. What was okay. What was right.”

They didn’t elaborate on the griefs or the faith shift but I can fill in the gaps with my own.

A friendship that went sideways. One that simply stopped. Another unsustainable. The one that flamed and crashed. The loss of a job prospect, a church, a community. Loss of consistency, friend circles and continuitiy. 

The loss of the stability of the faith of youth, young adult hood, or even the solidity of last week’s faith verses this week’s questions and doubt. 

Micro griefs
All piling up together
Undermining stability
Hope
Peace
The loss of the every day
Tears are not permitted
Needed
Unsupported
That we should

MUST 

Be tougher
Stronger
Hold it together
It’s not a life
After all
Only an idea
An ideal
A dream

This
That 
The other

Invisible yet visible
Tangible intangibles
Swept into a corner
Under the rubble
Heart pieces
Jagged edges cutting each other
All the relationships
Jumbled and tangled
Soaked in loss
Micro

Macro

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Ask me how I really feel…

Anger from Disney's Inside Out

As with many things, this has stewed within for quite a while. It’s not pretty and I’m giving myself permission to let it be not pretty.

Because I am angry. Not just a little annoyed. Not just a bit pissed off. Genuinely, “Get the @#&% out of my way” angry…

Angry about oppression
Angry about genocide
Angry about the patriarchy and systems
Angry about the loss, the mistreatment, the misogyny, the narcissism and the backstabbing  
Angry about the willful blindness, stupidity and cloak of omission

No… the cloak is of ignorance, willfully draped around shoulders too weak or unwilling to carry the weight of grief and pain borne by others

Angry for the lost, the dead, the missing and murdered
Angry for the misplaced, misunderstood and dismissed
Angry about the wars, the hunting, the slaughter

Angry about the putdowns, the hands to the face and the throttling of voices
Voices of the small, the wounded, the women and the queer
Voices of the different and the longing

Angry about the manipulation of scripture in the past
Angry that it continues
Angry that we let it
That we allow our hands to be tied and our voices to be silenced

Because it’s easier that way
Because we’ve been trained that way

Angry that we abdicate responsibility because the light is too hard on our eyes
The truth too hard on our hearts

Angry that we believe the lies
Lies that we are incapable
Lies that we are weak
Lies that we are wrong

Angry for the lies we are told
Angry for the lies we tell ourselves

When will it stop?

When will we stand?

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The Ugly Truth…

A sad little red paper robot holds a broken white paper heart

Ugh. The light off the snow was way to bright. It was searing into my brain making everything unpleasant. Kind of like the season we are in – too bright, too frilly, too shiny, too silly*. Don’t get me wrong, Christmas has its beautiful, wonderful, blessing filled moments but it also slaps faces and throws gut punches to those living in grief, loss and mourning.

It’s that gut punch that makes it hard to breathe. Or perhaps it’s the pressure to maintain an appearance of full function. I remember being teased by a co-worker when I would be out of breath simply moving about the building. In that time of loss I found it took so much effort to hold it all together the act of breathing became expendable. I had just enough strength to do one or the other – hold it together or breathe properly. One or the other, not both. Of course then I’d be completely winded doing a short flight of stairs or carrying boxes from one space to another. 

In that time, there were mornings I would picture wrapping strips of duct tape tightly around my heart so I could complete the necessary tasks of the day. It wasn’t a holiday season so even more so, how does one function in a world gloriously celebrating family and friends, gifts and holidays, festivities dripping with joy and brightness? And how does one come alongside someone who’s heart is in pieces held together by duct tape and tears?

Ugly truth alert: we are uncomfortable in each other’s messiness. We don’t like pain or grief or loss or confusion or any of the weighty emotions that are tangled up with grief. To alleviate our own discomfort in the face of someone else’s mess and broken heartedness, we try to cheer them up, pointing to the simplistic, speaking what we intend to be comfort that creates further separation and at worst, deeper wounds.

Perhaps then permission for those in loss – permission both from themselves and from others – to sit in the time of loss. To mourn how they need to mourn. If that means no tree, no lights, no decorations, minimal interactions with the public, so be it. Do what your heart needs you to do. For those in a position to love and care for them, permission to do the above and invitation to simply and sometimes silently be present. Permission to yourself to feel uncomfortable, to not have the right words, to lean in and be present. You don’t, you can’t and you shouldn’t fix it.  But your love and presence means the world.

In a nutshell, grief is heavy. Holidays can hurt. It is hard for everyone. Be gentle with yourself, with others. Love deeply and don’t rush to fix it.

*Think Berenstain Bears Old Hat New Hat is hard to expunge from this mom’s brain…
For help navigating grief and loss, consider joining a GriefWalk community.

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In the waiting


I’m watching, waiting for the sun to break through the skeletal trees standing as sentinels along the horizon. On most occasions waiting coffee with in hand is peace-filled, anticipating the day ahead, the world and I waiting in silence together.

Today as I watch and wait, I am challenged to find exactly where the sun will break through. There are no clouds to reflect the grow of the sun as it breaches the gap and I am left to my memory of the day before for both time and location.

In the waiting I am reminded this is the liturgical season of Advent, the time the church sets aside waiting for the arrival of Christ. Four Sundays designed to remind us of the journey and the generations the Jewish people waited for the arrival of the prophesied messiah. We have an advantage – we know how the story progresses. We know the baby will arrive from a teenage mom at an unlikely time in an unlikely time.

As the sun finally peeks through I realize how far off my prediction was. The glow broke though much further west than expected. Still glorious but where I was looking was wrong. Even more, while I was expecting the first light to break through 12 minutes before the hour, it was another 10 before the barest glimpse made it through the undergrowth. Not only did I have to wait for the place to be revealed, I had to wait even longer for it to actually happen.

I was wrong about the where and I was wrong about the when.

With the tradition of Advent we have the benefit of knowing where and when and I’m drawn to how complex things would have been for the Jewish community when Jesus entered into it. A whole people group waiting ultimately looking for the wrong thing in the wrong place and possibly at the wrong time.

I wonder if that time of waiting for the messiah would have been more akin to our waiting and longing for the end of this pandemic? The people then were waiting for someone powerful to arrive, to fix everything, defeat this enemy, remove this oppression once and for all. Is that not akin to what we face now every day in a pandemic stricken world?

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Dry Bones

Last fall I attended a leadership conference in Edmonton. As we wrapped up our final evening a prophetic invitation was issued calling us to the spiritual front line. Today this came to mind – this need for those that are equipped and able, to step into the fray on behalf of those who cannot. That there is a spiritual battle looming, if not yet already engaged, for which a vast army is needed. The church has – WE HAVE – been sleeping, lulled into complacency by comfort, pride and idolatry. Not obvious idolatry in the old school golden calf kind of way but in the subtle, distraction, addiction, soul numbing kind of way – those things that we pursue because they feel good and, even if only temporarily, fill a void. That in our apathy and complacency we are like dry bones in Ezekiel’s desert:

“The hand of the Lord was upon me, and he brought me out in the Spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of the valley; it was full of bones. And he led me around among them, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley, and behold, they were very dry. “And he said to me, “Son of man, can these bones live?” And I answered, “O Lord God, you know.” (Ezekiel 37:1-3, ESV)

Those of us then called to armour up and enter into the fray are those listening to Jesus, through the Holy Spirit as He instructs us:

“Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God to these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter you, and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am the Lord.’

So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I prophesied, there was a sound, and behold, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. And I looked, and behold, there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them. But there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they may live.’ So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived and stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army.” (Ezekiel 37: 3-10, ESV)

Ezekiel did the work as asked by God. He spoke the words and called the dry bones to life. It must have seemed absurd. The bones were old – “behold, they were very dry”. How could speaking words be sufficient? And yet he did, and they were and breath came into them and they were an exceedingly great army.

Which are you? Are you part of the bones in the middle of the valley or are you, like Ezekiel, being given “words to speak”, a task to do? Are you waiting to receive breath, to be brought to life? Are you waiting to speak, to move, to act on His command?

How can we – individually and corporately – bring life to our community, our city, our country, internationally and globally?
What does this look like for our churches
What does this look like for us as individuals?
What is Jesus asking you to do?

Again: What is Jesus asking YOU to do?

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Witness

“A zen koan echoed through my mind: If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, does it make a sound? And then I realized that observing the tree and how being a writer or an artist means being a witness. We witness beauty, joy, sadness, beginnings, endings—moments large and small, in worlds real and imagined. We are the witnesses that make sure the tree is heard.” — Lisa Papademetriou, Bookflow

Lisa’s words in my email inbox shook me. With pandemic life, I had shelved writing. Parenting, teaching our isolation bound kids, business managing, working, ministry zoom meetings, have taken over. Even that one solitary joy of a virtual FitFam membership is now shared with mini-me. Not a complaint but a statement. While some have too little to fill their time and binge on Netflix and cupcakes, others of us are seeing the joys of life smothered by responsibilities.

As more of my time is absorbed into other tasks, the easier it is to believe that writing  really doesn’t matter. The inner critic argues that no one reads it anyways so who will notice when I no longer contribute to newsletters, to email communications, to Facebook, to that draft that is started but stagnant.

Even conversations I might have in person with someone are shelved, just like my writing, because they are not effective outside the human connection, serve little end purpose, make no ripples in the pond-world around me. And thus, documenting the things going on around me has been set aside — the choices being made, people begin lifted up, smashed down, risks taken, risks avoided. 

Thus Lisa’s words struck something within. Those things I had avoided writing, those messages I had omitted, words unsaid, need to be written, need to be communicated. The situations need to be witnessed. Even if only by me to me. In the case of poor choices, to not say anything is to imply consent, that the behaviour is somehow acceptable. In spaces were someone has been wounded or there has been loss, be it a life, a job, or a dream, to remain silent leaves them burdened alone. 

If no one says, writes or records anything, there is no witness and the moment is lost, or, worse — the moment drags on deeper and more potent to the one it impacts.

In this, not every moment wants to be remembered but every moment should be witnessed. To let them go is a disservice to someone even if it that someone is only me. 

The Bookflow email ends with these words from Lisa, “… When we say that one person can’t change the world, remember that each person is a world—a whole universe—unto him or herself. Whenever you have an impact on someone, you are changing a world. So please keep working on discovering and telling it. Even if the person you impact is yourself.”

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Spilling Out

There was an article on Facebook a week ago, written by a nurse who watched parents bring their children into the PICU (Pediatric ICU). There was a pattern to the process of a beginning, during and after phase which paralleled what we’re going through currently under COVID restrictions. The start of the process, the beginning phase we are looking the situation head on, dealing with the immediate, the panic, the crisis reaction of radical change to life patterns, processes and realities. A shift of thinking about priorities and, well, everything.

The “During” phase is where we are now. During is full of unknowns. The end is unknown. What will happen “during” is unknown. Who will make it through to the end is unknown. Will I catch this? Will someone I care about? What do you mean now my pet could catch this? My neighbour? How will I shop safely? Can I just go for a walk?…

The underlying stress and anxiety of the during phase colours everything like an abstract sort of  baseline onto which everything else piles. The Everything else includes general life – groceries, work, school for the kids, music lessons, pet care, putting in the garden, running a business, [insert usual activity here]. Each of these things has a coating, a wrapper of added time, considerations and sanitizing called “COVID-19” increasing the time each things takes and increasing the level of stress each thing induces.

It’s this during phase where who we are starts to show more clearly. How anxiety and stress play out in our behaviour becomes quicker to surface. 

As Jesus often does, this coincidentally came in my feed:

For some, this is tears, others, sharp tones, others try to take control of anything and everything, some turn daily living into check lists, others hide in video games or literature, others lash out at everyone around them. Yet others still smile, still show grace. There is love and lightness in their words, their eyes and their activities. What is inside of us is what splashes out when we are bumped.

Jesus, I bring my heart and my mind to you. I offer you my self, this vessel that you have built. Holy Spirit, will you show me, in a picture, a word, a memory, or in scripture, what is in me that is spilling out? Lord show me the good things as well as those I need to change. I especially ask you to show me where my sins, where my habits or thought processes are discouraging or hurtful to those around me. Now, please show me the things that are godly, the gifts of the Spirit that you are growing in me. 

Lord Jesus you are my example. Show me how to grow these blessings that they are the things that splash out in this time. The things that are jostled out onto others that bring joy, peace, love and hope.

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Cost Uncountable

(A Five Minute Friday Post)

Everything.

It cost everything.

Stepping into obedience the first time cost little in comparison. Yes I gave up time. A LOT of time. And I gave up freedom to do what I wanted when I wanted to but I gained so much in that same space. I gained a knowledge of the Holy Spirit. Of how he moves and works and gifts. I gained insight into missional work and what it means to give thing up in order to serve someone else. Even when that someone else is unknown to me. Unknown to many. Unseen and unloved.

It cost me innocence but gained wisdom and a deeper connection to Jesus. More time in prayer. More time in praise. More time just being.

The second step into obedience was not the same. The second stepping in was a stepping out. Stepping out of the life that had been built. Stepping out of the community I’d come to love. Stepping out of the routine our family had come to know.

Stepping into obedience the first time was joy, light, excitement and nervousness at moving beyond anything I’d done before but knowing Jesus was asking it, that he would equip me regardless the challenge.

Stepping into obedience the second time was pain, sorrow, mourning and reluctance at moving out of familiarity, joy and community. It was like my heart was forcibly ripped from my chest. Yet Jesus was asking this too, same as he had the first.

In my darkest times, I lament the cost. In the brighter moments, I know his cost was much, much higher. And I rejoice through the sorrow.