Hope at the End of Life


What do you do when  you hear that  your grandmother has been in a car accident and there is little hope of recovery?  Or your 94-year-old father who has dementia  has fallen and broken his hip?  Or your Aunt Matilda has stage 4 ovarian cancer that has spread?  How do families make decisions in these kinds of situations? 

Image result for images of dying personTo support caregivers faced with life and death decisions, Reverend Jamie Haith designed a five-part series called the Hope Initiative that covers love, hope, peace, joy, and faith. It has a Christian focus, but is relevant to people of all faiths.

They need to focus on the last chapter of the person’s life and know that God is there to bring peace. According to Mona Hanford, an end-of-life activist and teacher, “having God in our lives and having spiritual lifelines that attach us to God’s care are so important, because otherwise we are left with the grim reality of looking at the furnace or the dirt.”

Often families feel they have to do everything for a family member who is facing death. They want to try every test, every medication, every procedure because they cannot accept the reality that “we all have an expiration date.” They have to decide whether they want a  peaceful exit or a long drawn out, perhaps painful one. The Hope Initiative tries to assure families  that they aren’t killing their father if they don’t put a feeding tube in him when he’s too frail to recover. “Medical technology frequently ends up being a hindrance rather than a help: people put hope in technology and medications rather than in God,” Hanford says.

The Hope Initiative supports people as they say good-bye to their loved ones. It is a time to share memories and to tell them how much you love them, instead of hooking them up to machines or poisoning them with radiation. Caregivers need to reassure their loved ones that God is with them as they complete their life journey.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
  Limping to God I come to you, God, weather-beaten and limping, asking for forgiveness for all the times I have failed to be faithful and attentive to all those around me, especially the elderly who have run the race, the poor, the lonely and abandoned, who need my care and concern.     Is there any hope for these old bones? What will it take to change my limp into a surge of energy and a ready step? Teach me to become more caring, more responsive, more aware. Give me eyes to see and the will to act on my good intentions.   Water my dried up spirit and shriveled body, expand my shrunken heart. Give me eyes to see what you are leading me to do even as my bones creak and my legs become unsteady. Make me remember that I am here to serve, to listen, to be ready to be your hands and feet today.   Barbara Mayer, OSB    
Read more
Image
    “Wonderfully Made” When I took a college English course, our first assignment was to write an essay about whether we would rather lose our sight or lose our legs. It was a thought-provoking choice. If we became blind, we would miss seeing our loved ones and all the beauty of our world. If we could not walk, we would be hindered from traveling and moving around without help. I chose to keep my eyesight since I love to read and write and enjoy the variety and beauty that surrounds us.   Of course, I’m glad I didn’t have to make that choice in real life, but it was a thought-provoking assignment. It made me think about how much we take our bodies for granted. I began to think about all the organs, veins, arteries, canals, nerves, and bones we have in our bodies and how they all work together to keep us alive and healthy. It is not until we lose one of them that we realize how magnificent we are, created in the “image and likeness of God.” God loves each and every one of us as if
Read more
Image
  Overcoming Discouragement Sometimes discouragement and failure take over our lives, and we cannot seem to crawl out of our hole. Even if in reality they are not a true picture, we can be blinded by the seeming darkness.  It often takes another person to uncover what is hidden from us and to see through the cloudy picture.  I am reminded of a story about Bill Wilson, the founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. He tells of how he felt his dream of starting a group for people with drinking problems was not going anywhere. Then unexpectedly Father Dowling, a disheveled priest, came to his door in the middle of a snowstorm. Bill’s caretaker told him that a “damn bum” was at the door. Bill was tired but agreed to see him and in doing so had his “second conversion experience.” Bil and Father Dowling talked way into the night, and Bill told of his “high hopes and plans, and spoke about his anger, despair and mounting frustrations.”  It turned out that the elderly priest had had similar feel
Read more