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? 

To 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.