DEATHBED QUESTIONS: DISCERNING THE UNSPOKEN
Nursing the soul of a dying person demands a heart sensitive to the tide of needs.
Linwood H. Chamberlain, Jr.
January 1, 1986
A woman I'll call Marylynn, the fifty-nine-year-old mother of one of my parishioners, was dying of cancer. When I first entered her living room, now converted into a "dying room" complete with hospital bed and institutional sheets, death haunted the house. Her husband had silently pointed my way into the room, whispering at the door, "I won't disturb the two of you." He then beat a hasty retreat to his garage. The shades were pulled tightly across the window, permitting only a few streams of dust-flecked light to trickle to the bed. The stale smell of stagnant air and unwatered flowers hung over the room like mist over a pond. Marylynn, thin and pale, was lying limp in her bed. Her breathing was shallow. Death, the doctor had said, would come soon. I went to her side, took her hand, and announced myself. Still I was not sure she had recognized who I was or even that I had come into the room. I said I'd like to pray with her. In prayer I called upon the Holy Spirit for trust in the resurrection and assurance of eternal life. When I finished, Marylynn sat up. She looked directly into my eyes and said, "Damn it! Just because I'm dying doesn't mean I want to hear about heaven!" She collapsed back into her bed like a balloon suddenly deflating. Over the course of that visit, Marylynn informed me that if God was so mean as to strike her down with cancer just as she had started going back to church, she wasn't sure she wanted to spend eternity with him. She hated God; she hated me; she hated her husband and her family. Marylynn had begun my education about what she needed so she could die in faith. I had approached Marylynn from my perspective. Seeing the signs of death in her environment and observing her husband's avoidance, I had sensed ...
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