Buch lesen: «Before We Say Goodbye: Preparing for a Good Death»

BEFORE WE SAY GOODBYE

PRACTICAL GUIDANCE, INSPIRING STORIES AND PRAYERS TO HELP US PREPARE A GOOD DEATH


Ray Simpson

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Foreword

Introduction

The Things They Say about Dying

PART ONE

Befriend Death When You Are Young

There’s a Time to Give and a Time to go

The Secret of Life is the Secret of Death

Death Puts Life in Perspective

When Faced, Death Builds Valour

The Ache Inside Us

Make Death your Anam Cara

Start Now

Picture Death

Master the Fear of Death

The Faces of Death

See Eternity in a Grain of Sand

Live Life as a Journey

Start With Life’s Little Deaths

Practise Going to Sleep

Practise Making Transitions

Practise Being on your Deathbed

Practise Praying

Get to Know your body

Move with Life’s Rhythms

Come Through Rough Passages

Red, White and Blue Deaths

Reach for the Edges

Review your Life

Be Present to the Dying

Enjoy the Communion of Saints

Encounter Angels

Transformations

Be Prepared!

PART TWO

Grow Before You Go

Live Simply

Do it Now!

Fulfil your Destiny

Listen to your Soul Thoughts

Face Pain

Know your Life Story

Share your Life Story

Live Out of your Vulnerability

Speak Out your Anguish

Engage with the Stages of Life

Be a Pilgrim

Accumulate Timeless Treasure

Does Death Rob Life of its Meaning?

Become free to Move on

PART THREE

Go Prepared

What Will you Leave Behind?

Don’t Leave a Muddle

Make a Will

Apply the Golden Rule to your Descendants

Express your Feelings of Loss

Acknowledge the Stages of Grief

Be Real

Free the Trapped Spirit

Release Compassion

Listen to your Dreams

At the First Glimpse of Death’s Approach

The Healing Power of Acceptance

Prepare to Leave

Plan the Funeral

Celebrate a Life

When would you Like to be Remembered?

‘Honour Me, Don’t Humour Me’

How to Say What we Want to Say

Dear Grace, When I am Dying…

Saying our Goodbyes

Parting Gifts

Epitaphs

A Way to Meditate at Death

Fun on the Way out

Last Wishes

Final Words

Farewell Blessings

Anointed for Burial

Choose your Time to go

Early Exit or Encore?

On the Day Death Knocks at the Door

PART FOUR

Create a Good ‘Departure Lounge’

Draw up Your ‘Departure Lounge’ Guidelines

Anything to Declare?

Forgiveness Parlour

Music

Prayers

Angels

Songs

Poets’ Corner

Bible Readings

Things to Look at

Something to Hold

Diaries, Albums and Videos

A Private Place

Liturgy for the Great Passage

PART FIVE

The Other Side

The Long Jump

Gone Where?

Life is Just Beginning

When the Saints go Marching in

The Place of Resurrection

A Veil thin as Gossamer

The Morning After

Out of the Body Experiences

Life after Life

What is the other World Like?

What Happens after Death?

Images of Heaven

The Eternal Struggle of Love

The Voyage to the other Side

PART SIX

Inspiring Deaths

Jesus (D. 33)

Ignatius (D. 107)

Columba (D. 597)

Moninne (D. C. 518)

Aidan (D. 651)

Cuthbert (D. 687) and Ramon (D. 2000)

Hilda (D. 680)

Caedmon (D. 680)

A Boy (D. C. 690)

Bede (D. 735)

Mum (D. 1971)

Colin

A Dancer (D. PRE-1994)

Norma (D. 1991)

Nigel (D. 1993)

The ‘Sweet Pea’ (D. 1999)

A Blessing for Death

References

Some Helpful Books

Pull-out Forms

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

Praise

Copyright

About the Publisher

FOREWORD

by Jean Peart

I am so grateful to God for leading me to this book, and so grateful to Ray for writing it. It was such a help and comfort to me when my dear mother was dying. The prayers in this book gave reassurance, comfort and confidence as I stayed with my mother during her last weeks to continually pray over her and, I believe, to ease her passage to heaven.

My mother’s passing was so peaceful and gentle (just like a candle going out). She indeed had death without pain, death without fear, death without death. A quote that has spoken to me over the last year is this: ‘One should spend one’s life contemplating one’s deathbed.’ Even the staff at the nursing home were amazed at the wonderful passing my mother had. The peace at the time of her passing and afterwards in the nursing home was like a blanket of peace that descended over the whole place for several hours.

This book is both deeply spiritual and very practical – a wonderful aid for those who care. I kept it in my handbag for a month, and sat with it in my hand through the last days with my mother.

May God bless and keep all who use this book.

Jean Peart

The Open Gate

The Holy Island of Lindisfarne

INTRODUCTION

Life is a journey from the womb to the tomb.

There are things to learn that make the journey, even at its end, worthwhile.

To live well requires us to die well.

If we are to die well, we need to prepare for it.

We are all dying. Some of us die sooner than others.

The best time to start to prepare for death is when we are young.

Please don’t die without having lived.

Please don’t depart without having said truly satisfying goodbyes.

The airliner went into a nose dive. A maniac had attacked the pilot and broken the autopilot. Every passenger was convinced they were plunging to certain death. Lady Anabel Goldsmith was on that plane. In seats behind her were her son Zak, her daughter Jemima Khan, and her grandchildren. A myriad things she would have liked to have said and done before they parted this life flashed through her mind, but it seemed too late now. She had time to utter only one word to them: ‘Goodbye.’ By some miracle the plane, only seconds from disaster, was saved. Lady Anabel was given a second chance to get things right before she said goodbye.

This book offers us a chance to get things right before we say goodbye. It may be our only chance. Although we can run away from almost anything in life, we cannot run away from death. So much has been written about how to cope with other people’s deaths. So little has been written about preparing for our own death. Those books that have been written are not the sort you would hold in your hand, or keep in your heart, when you are too weak to take in new information. This simple, practical guide comes from one heart to another. It calls us to live and to die well, to be good stewards of our short time on earth.

There are as many ways of dying as there are people. This little book will help you to plan your final journey, your farewells, your funeral and your will in a way that will uniquely bless you and those around you. Some are too fearful or thoughtless to do this. This book will help you to do it gently, in small doses.

Dying itself is a journey. We cannot halt it, but we may influence the spirit in which we make it. We can learn from enlightened people who have made glorious exits. We can learn from practitioners who have studied the cycles of dying. We can learn from the caring insights of the hospice movement. And now that hospital and funeral services are business oriented, we can be part of a citizens’ movement to take back responsibility for our own and our loved ones’ departures.

THE THINGS THEY SAY ABOUT DYING

To die well is the chief part of virtue.

GREEK PROVERB

A good death does honour to a whole life.

ITALIAN PROVERB

It is a great art to die well, and to be learned by those in health.

JEREMY TAYLOR, The Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying, 1651

Death can cause a human being to become what he or she was called to become; it can be, in the fullest sense of the word, an accomplishment.

FRANCOIS MITTERAND

Death, so far from being cruel, is an act of love rounding off our brief testing here.

ELIZABETH MYERS

It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death should ever have been designed by Providence as an evil.

JONATHAN SWIFT

Lord, grant that my last hour may be my best hour.

OLD ENGLISH PRAYER

If you would endure life, be prepared for death.

SIGMUND FREUD

Prepare for your death.

ST COLUMBA

When we are dead, and people weep for us and grieve, let it be because we touched their lives with beauty and simplicity.

JACOB P. RUDIN

Is there not a certain satisfaction in the fact that natural limits are set to the life of the individual, so that at the conclusion it may appear as a work of art?

ALBERT EINSTEIN

In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

Dying is like being stuck in a traffic jam.

There is a crown for those who endure.

ANON

Blessed be God for our sister, the death of the body.

ST FRANCIS OF ASSISI

Death is the great adventure beside which moon landings and space trips pale into insignificance.

JOSEPH BAYLY

*

Mortal loss is an Immortal gain.

The ruins of time builds Mansions in Eternity.

WILLIAM BLAKE

PART ONE

* * *

BEFRIEND DEATH WHEN YOU ARE YOUNG

What’s brave, what’s noble,Let’s do it after the high Roman fashion,And make death proud to take us.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE,

Antony and Cleopatra, ACT IV, SCENE 16

THERE’S A TIME TO GIVE AND A TIME TO GO

For everything there is a season,and a time for every matter under heaven:a time to be born, and a time to die;a time to plant, and a time to pluck up…a time to seek, and a time to lose.

ECCLESIASTES 3:1,2,6 NRSV

The advice that most shaped me as a young man was this: Do not waste your life on empty pleasures or burn out prematurely for some great idea; let your life be like a candle, which gives of itself consistently until, when it has given all it has, it flickers out.

I want to give the best that I have at every stage of life. In order to give my best, I must also learn to receive from others at every level of my being. When I have given all that I have to give, and received all that I have to receive, I will flicker out in a glow of fulfilment.

Of course, none of us will achieve this 100 per cent, but it is good to aim for it. We will learn through trial and error. Life affords us opportunities to learn from our mistakes and, whatever our failings, to increase our levels of giving and receiving.

If we live like this, dying can feel like fulfilment rather than theft.

THE SECRET OF LIFE IS THE SECRET OF DEATH

To live and die well – this is surely the supreme aim. I used to think that I might do one, or neither, but certainly not both. Now I know that the secret of one is also the secret of the other.

A professional rugby player told me that the secret of being a successful player is to go all out, to keep your eye on the ball, and not to hold back through fear of injury or failure.

Some people go all out in life, but they mess it up because they do not keep their eye on the ball – they lose sight of the end of life. Others hold back because they fear they will get hurt or fail.

I used to hold back because I feared I might lose my security or status. A counsellor advised me to visualize the worst scenario that could happen to me. I did so. Then he challenged me to face that worst scenario. I did so. Having faced it, I became willing to go through with it. Even though the worst scenario did not occur, facing it set me free to live fully in any scenario.

It is like that with life. Death stalks us as an unconscious paralyser, even when we are young. If we face this worst scenario of death now, it frees us to live at our maximum throughout our lives.

If we live fully, we shall die fulfilled.

If we are champions in life, we shall be champions in death.