When I die,

CONGREGATE - Nikki McClure

Taken from one of her yearly calendars.

The highlight of several Christmas gift exchanges in the Pacific NW.

This was a weekend of hosting gatherings around my table and telling stories, laughing, talking about meaningful, important things, crying, singing, and feasting on good food and each other.

Trudy came over last night and facilitated a discussion with me and R. and several friends about death and the 5 wishes. Trudy is a force of love in this world all the way from Kansas to Seattle with an arm down to California and many other places I don't even know about. She started the AIDS Care Team program here in Seattle at Multifaith Works and she is a wealth of amazing stories of compassion, good deaths, isolation, separation, and unconditional love. She spent some of her life as a hospital chaplain and still does this work per diem with the Cancer Care Alliance. Currently, she is focusing on her own business Heartwork Consulting. She offers many services, but one of her specialties is Five Wishes/End of Life Planning Groups. For more specific information check out her website links all over this post or if you need something more direct click here.

We started out with an amazing potluck dinner. Trudy, Rebecca, Shannon, and I don't do much together without a good meal. Rebecca introduced me to Trudy a few years ago through some listening session and we've been eating together and planning retreats ever since. Everyone brought something delicious. I made the best batch of Chana Punjabi/Sour Chickpea Curry I've ever whipped up thanks to R's suggestion that we use the slow cooker and his willingness to chop onions and garlic in mass quantities. And everyone else filled the table with amazing contributions: homemade cornbread, fruit salad with a delectable honey sauce, little roasted cute ass potatoes, spinach salad with shaved beets and thinly sliced fennel, and my favorite-roasted green beans, mandarins, and radicchio in a olive oil, garlic, salt, and anchovy dressing. Anchovies - who knew? I picked every last bean and radiccio leaf out of that serving dish and licked my fingers clean while Rebecca was taking care of the last mandarins. Yum. Hard to go to bed complaining when your boyfriend walks into the kitchen at the end of the night happy to do the dishes, one of his self described ministries. Is there anyone who isn't happy to go turn off the lights and pull up the covers knowing there's a clean kitchen and dining table to wake up to?

Everyone seemed really happy to be together sharing a meal and getting ready to talk about a subject most of us aren't comfortable with - our mortality. We started the meal with a Mary Oliver poem called "A River Far Away and Long Ago" from Red Bird. "Since then I have looked and looked for myself, not sure who I am, or where, or, more importantly, why. It's okay - I have had a wonderful life. Still, I ponder where that other is - where I landed, what I thought, what I did, what small or even maybe meaningful deeds I might have accomplished somewhere among strangers, coming to them as only a river can - touching every life it meets - that endlessly kind, that enduring."

Trudy lit a candle for the mystery and the reality that is death. We will all be experiencing this transition and yet we have a really hard time discussing it, sometimes even when it's literally staring us in the face. We'd often rather deny it, fight it, or skim over the surface. Trudy's preference and those of us gathered with her last night - go deep, shine a light in the darkness. Dying does not need to be a taboo subject and it's a gift to ourselves and our loved ones to talk about it before it's absolutely necessary.

If you don't want to have a meaningful, deep conversation don't call Trudy. She doesn't start slow and ramp up either she goes straight down. She did allow us about 45 minutes to eat and tell food stories and swap recipes and techniques. Then we cleared the table, put the tea kettle on, lit a candle, passed out index cards, and wrote the words WHEN I DIE, on our cards and then we each finished the sentence for ourselves.

Wow. Quite the depth and variety of sharing going around the table one person at a time. Set the tone for the conversation quickly and we got down to business. Trudy brought each one of us a copy of the Five Wishes booklet - a legally binding document once signed and witnessed by two people in the State of Washington (and many other states).

Five Wishes lets your family, friends, and doctors know (in pretty amazing detail for an easy to read and follow document):

- Who you want to make health care decision for you when you can't make them

- The kind of medical treatment you want or don't want

- How comfortable you want to be

- How you want people to treat you

- What you want your loved ones to know

These questions cover everything from life support, to organ donation, quality of care, funeral/memorial wishes, burial, cremation, etc.

Access the Five Wishes website here.

Trudy led us through a very thorough and meaningful discussion leaving several of us with more questions, confusion, thankfulness, and clarity.

Why would relatively young people get together to talk about the end of our lives? Several of us are dealing with this with our parents and grandparents and we've witnessed good deaths and unnecessarily hard, painful deaths. And we've become distinctly aware lately that except for one or two of us at the table we don't have next of kin in town or near by. For the rest of us having next of kin close requires a flight from at least two states away. We have each other close by and we want to know how to care for one another in case of an emergency. We want to respect each others wishes and be firm about them if necessary. And we want to share our wishes with our family members before the questions comes up. At this point in our lives we'd likely die early due to an accident and not an illness, but we don't know that and either way it felt really good to have the conversation, start the paperwork, and hear others stories and wishes. Pretty tender to have so many good folks around. And it definitely encouraged us to widen the circle and start the conversation about final wishes with others we're close to.

Trudy closed with this quote from A River Runs Through It.

"Eventually, all things merge into one. And a river runs through it. The river was cut by the river's great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs...I am haunted by waters."

-Normal Maclean

I went to bed with a full head last night and a heavy heart. I inadvertently learned that an inmate I visited with this year overdosed and died leaving some sweet children behind. I am sad about this for many reasons that I can't write about here.

Jail is not an in-patient treatment center for addiction or mental illness. It is often used as a substitute. It's not even close. Of course, a rare individual can use even the most horrible of situations to fuel a spiritual practice and transformation, but I don't believe in counting on that for the well being of our society or the individuals making up our society and living the day to day struggle. Why do we insist on making it more difficult than it already is?

I also went to bed happy to have spent the evening in my apartment with these people who are dear to me. Grateful for Trudy and all the amazing people I have in my life. For my friends that I hope are with me when I pass. For those I feel confident will respect my wishes. And I felt heavy thinking about Death with Dignity, the history of mental illness that runs in my family, unsuccessful suicide attempts by more than 1 person, lonely deaths, lonely lives, and my highschool hospital roommate Winnie.

I was surprised this morning when R. and I were talking about last night and what was still on my mind. I made a discovery that I would be o.k. dying in a hospital if it was appropriate. When I was a senior in high school I came down with a bad case of bronchitis that turned to pneumonia. I was out of school for a month. At home on the couch for 3 weeks and then finally I was admitted to the hospital for a week. I started feeling better immediately with oxygen, IV drugs, and deep, deep rest. This season of my life makes me think of my mom a lot. There's a witching hour for asthma. It happens in the middle of the night between 2:30 and 4:30. She would sit up with me rubbing my back, making us tea, and just sitting with me in the quiet waiting until I could use my inhaler again. She was working two jobs at the time and taking care of me. Thank you, Mom. I spent a lot of time alone in the apartment. And also, friends from high school would come and visit me. A large group came and had lunch with me one day. Chad and Eric came over and made chicken noodle soup one day and we watched The Godfather. When I was in the hospital I remember clearly James and Sara B. both making trips to see me and climbing in bed with me. The staff enjoyed having a young person on the floor and I remember a male nurse coming and sitting by my bed eating popcorn and watching TV with me during his break.

It was such a relief to be admitted. I was buzzing the nurse in the middle of the first night I was there and puking in my bed and I can still remember Winnie in the bed next to me, dying of lung cancer, and sweetly saying to me "that's right Honey, get it out." We would listen to music together and talked about church, boys, and a host of other things. Winnie was relieved to be rooming with a fellow United Methodist. I'm not sure how old she was, maybe around 70? We wrote letters to each other after we were both released from the hospital. I carry a picture of Winnie and her husband in my checkbook to this day. She passed around my high school graduation. The day we graduated Chad drove me to her viewing after our ceremony.

It was a relief to me to get to the care I needed and it was a relief for my mom too to have me admitted. When I die, I want to be in a place where I can relax and truly rest, be cared for without being burden, see and feel sunlight, and I want a mix of quiet and company. I like to be sung to and if you're close to me you're welcome to get in the bed with me. If I had to die young I'd be in a good place here and I'd have no problem requesting Liberation to come surround my bed.

I want my organs donated, I don't want to be embalmed, I want to be buried in cloth in the earth or cremated if necessary. Make sure you sing songs and hold hands at my memorial.

Just to be clear, I love my life and I'm not intending to go anywhere anytime soon. All this talking about the reality of death brings the focus around to LIVING.

Thank you, Trudy. Thank you, dear friends.

And a final poem for the night from Sylvia Plath

I Am Vertical

But I would rather be horizontal.

I am not a tree with my root in the soil

Sucking up minerals and motherly love

So that each March I may gleam into leaf,

Nor am I the beauty of a garden bed

Attracting my share of Ahs and spectacularly painted,

Unknowing I must soon unpetal.

Compared with me, a tree is immortal

And a flower-head not tall, but more startling,

And I want to the one's longevity and the other's daring.

Tonight, in the infinitesimal light of the stars,

The trees and flowers have been strewing their cool odors.

I walk among them, but none of them are noticing.

Sometimes I think that when I am sleeping

I must most perfectly resemble them -

Thoughts gone dim.

It is more natural to me, lying down.

Then the sky and I are in open conversation,

And I shall be useful when I lie down finally:

The trees may touch me for once, and the flowers have time for me.

Good night.