The unknown
I spend just about every day with people who are dying. People hear that I work for a hospice and they often recoil. “How can you do that work?” “How can you be around all those dying people?” I have stopped trying to come up with answers. We’re all surrounded by dying people. All of us will die. It may be sooner it may be later but it is certain. The only difference with the people I spend my days with is that they know it and they have a slightly shorter time frame.
What is amazing me today about these angels in the making that I am journeying with is what scares them. It’s different for everyone as you can imagine. For some it’s pain, for some it’s losing control, for some it’s leaving loves ones and family. For one gentleman who I have recently come to know it’s that some of his hair is changing color.
Of all of his symptoms, all of his pain, and loss of function, weakness, weight loss, it’s this odd, unexplainable symptom that has him the most bothered. And when I ask him why he tells me “fear of the unknown.”
Death is the ultimate unknown. What will it look like when we cross that veil? What is it to spend your days knowing this unknown is waiting to meet you?
And can we meet the unknown with something beyond fear?
August 19 2008 01:57 pm | Death and Dying
