The Ultimate Encounter With the Unknown
Of course a card game! One of my main roles as a palliative nurse practitioner was to facilitate conversations with patients and families to explore their wishes in end-of-life, sickness, and aging through defining quality of life. I continue to be surprised at how many of us never discuss these topics with our loved ones or even ourselves.
Why is it that it takes actually being sick, aging, or dying to start to explore these topics? Living fully takes a lifetime. Wouldn’t you think having a good death would too?
Say this out loud to yourself:
I will die someday & my loved ones will also die.
There you said it.
In palliative care, the one thing that’s consistent is that initially, patients are hesitant to explore death or even the possibility of it. Most can’t even say the words die or dying. Maybe not at first but most of my patients at one time or another, express gratitude for the discussions. Finally! Someone is willing to discuss all this uncertainty of dying.
This leads me to believe that there is some intrinsic part of us and our humanity that wishes to face the uncertain, wishes to talk about death more openly.
Take a minute to ask yourself these questions - does your partner/spouse, son/daughter, mom/dad, friend know:
How you want to die?
What you want the environment to be like?
What you want to do before your death to be ready?
What you want to happen after your death?
If not, why don’t they know this about you?
Is it important to you that they know?
Dying is so much more than a medical event, it is the cumulation of our journey, our purpose, our time with our loved ones, our time here on earth. It’s the ultimate transformation or transcendence.
Elephant in the Room is not just about death and dying. It also explores how we want to age well. What are your wishes in aging and the culmination of your journey? What do you want some of your last adventures to be? If someone you love has ever developed dementia (which often is a long journey being physically healthy while our mind slowly declines), did the family know how you’d want to be taken care of? Whether or not you want to be feed to prolong your life while you didn’t even know your name or recognize your loved ones?
Death, sickness, and aging is the ultimate encounter with the unknown. Exploring the unknown helps us learn what we value and our purpose in life. Can we truly be alive without holding an awareness and appreciation for death?
Imagine if we talked about death as we talk about living. Imagine we didn’t wait until getting old or sick to contemplate our immortality. Do you think it’s possible that it would deepen our gratitude for the life we are living? Maybe embracing our mortality would help us to not take the small moments for granted.
We all eventually grow old and die. Or some of us may die before old age whether through sickness or an accident. It’s our most common experience. Exploring this commonality with each other has the potential to nurture our sense of connection and community.
We could all use that right now. Thanks Pandemic! The years to be remembered as “the ones that just kept coming at us.” Is that really 3 years ago?
The question is - how do we even go about exploring all these topics without it being so dark and depressing? And, I haven’t even touched on grief yet.
Deal out those cards y’all! And let's play a round of Elephant in the Room and find out.