Posted on 13 June 2011, 13:15

The key to a good death, the speaker on the subject of “compassion in dying,” told the audience is “making the most of each day.”  She also expressed it as “living life to the fullest” and “living in the moment.”  The audience, which included many hospice workers, nodded its assent, as if the speaker had provided new wisdom.
 
My reaction at the end of the presentation was one of bewilderment as the speaker never once touched upon the spiritual aspects of dying.  She never even alluded to the possibility that consciousness survives physical death.  I later found out that, even though it is the most important issue relating to a dying person, hospice policy discourages such discussions.

I wondered what a dying person should do to “make the most of each day.”  Should he or she plan an around-the-world trip?    What if the person does not have enough physical strength to leave his or her bedroom or house?  What if the person is already doing pretty much everything he or she can to make the most of each day?

I began to daydream and envisioned myself as a hospice patient with just days or weeks to live.  I was standing in the middle of the main room.  There were seven other people in the room   Four of them were sitting in front of a TV set, while two were playing checkers and one was reading.  I wandered over to the TV group and noted that they were watching “Dr. Phil,” who was talking with members of a typical American family,  the father being an alcoholic, the mother a hundred pounds overweight, their 19-year-old son unemployed and a drug addict, and their 15-year-old daughter seven months pregnant. I wondered how I might enjoy this program and was curious as to how the others were incorporating it into this wise philosophy of making the most of the moment.  When I looked around, two of the four were sleeping, apparently feeling the effects of their pain medication. Of the two who were awake, one had her head hanging, eye lids at half mast and lip drooping while staring off into space.  The one person watching the TV was a man.  He was smiling and seemingly enjoying the program. I asked him if he found the program entertaining.  He replied in the affirmative, explaining that seeing the world so screwed up makes it easier for him to accept death.

I asked the woman who was reading what the book was all about and she responded that it was a romance novel.  Clearly, living in the moment, for her, meant an escape from reality, which is pretty much what all fictional stories are.  Just then the hospice director walked into the room and yelled out, “Is everyone having fun?” There was a moan and a groan, to which the hospice director cheerfully reacted, “Great!  Don’t forget bingo after dinner.” 

I walked over to the two checker players, who were just finishing up a game.  One of them was tired and needed to go to his room and give himself a shot, so the other one asked me if I wanted to join him for a game. I sat down and played a game, but all the while I played I kept wondering what difference does it make if I win or lose this game.  If I win, so what?  If I lose, so what?  When I’m dead will it make any difference that I won a game of checkers?  My checkers opponent mentioned that his daughter and grandson had paid him a visit the day before.  I asked him if they had a good visit. He sort of shrugged and said his daughter brought her lap top and spent the whole time making a list of his assets while his grandson went off in a corner to play games on his iPod and hardly spoke to him. 

I walked outside and saw one of the patients painting a landscape. She said she was going to give it to her son to hang in his house and hoped that he would pass it on to future generations as part of her legacy.  I could envision the son hanging it in an out-of-the-way corner of a spare bedroom or in the laundry room, noticing it a few seconds every month, but then I had a vision of the son dying and the grandchildren, covered in tattoos and with their noses, tongues, and lips all pierced with jewelry, selling the painting at a garage sale. There also, in a box of frames, selling for 50 cents each, was a photo of old grandma.  So much for her legacy?

I walked around to the other side of the house and met a middle-aged man who was puffing away on a cigarette and looking quite weary and nervous.  I started up a conversation with him and found out that just before being admitted to hospice he had, after being told that he had only months to live, taken the trip of a lifetime to various foreign countries.  He consorted with many women of easy virtue, got drunk every night, and had a ball. It was eat, drink, and be merry.  But it was all over now and he had to face up to dying.  I asked him about his spiritual beliefs and he said he had none.  He didn’t believe that anything came after death, but reasoned that he would be extinct and wouldn’t know about it anyway.  “So why worry about it?” he asked with a certain bravado, as he seemed to shake in his boots while stomping out his fourth or fifth cigarette and reaching for another one, fumbling it as he attempted to grasp it between his lips and light it. 

I returned to the painter and asked her about her spiritual beliefs.  She said that her pastor told her that she would sleep in her grave until some far off judgment day and thus she found the prospect of life after death of little comfort.  Moreover, she figured that her deceased husband was burning in hell for the all the grief he gave her and so she wasn’t sure if there would be anyone there she knew.

My checkers opponent came out into the yard, and I asked him about his spiritual beliefs and whether they offered him any comfort.  “We’re not supposed to think or talk about those things,” he gruffly replied.  “We’ve got to finish living this life first.”  The TV watcher and the book reader were also outside by then and both nodded that they agreed with the checkers player. “We’ll deal with that when the time comes,” one of them exclaimed.

When it was time for bingo, each of us was asked to contribute a prize and leave it on the table in front.  I contributed copies of my two books, The Articulate Dead and The Afterlife Revealed, the latter being the Kindle version, hoping that they might give someone hope during his or her final days. The other contributions included a bottle of wine, a Lady Gaga recording, a murder mystery book, a pack of cigarettes, a painting of a vase, a used necktie, a certificate for three free dancing lessons, and a bar of soap.

One by one, the prizes went. The bottle of wine went first, followed by the free dancing lessons.  I was the third to yell “Bingo!” and opted for the bar of soap.  In the end, my two books remained on the table. When the last person went up to collect his prize, he looked at the books, curled his nose and walked back to his seat with nothing in hand.

As the hospice director saw it, we each made the most of that day. We were entertained by television, books, and games, were each able to win at bingo, and we were able to go outside and smell the roses.  Can it get any more exciting?

As Professor William James of Harvard, one of the pioneers of psychology, saw it, “the luster of the present hour is always borrowed from the background of possibilities it goes with.”  In other words, you can’t effectively “live in the present” without considering the future.  “Every one knows how when a painful thing has to be undergone in the near future, the vague feeling that it is impending penetrates all our thought with uneasiness and subtly vitiates our mood even when it does not control our attention,” James added.  “It keeps us from being at rest, at home in the given present.”

But we remain a nation of Philistines when it comes to dealing with death and talking about the afterlife.  “We make rounds and talk about many trivialities or the wonderful weather outside and the sensitive patient will play the game and talk about next spring, even if he is quite aware there will be no next spring for him,” wrote Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, who attempted, with very limited success, to revolutionize our approach to dying and death. “These doctors then, will tell us that their patients do not want to know the truth, that they never ask for it, and that they believe all is well.  The doctors are, in fact, greatly relieved that they are not confronted and are often quite unaware that they provoked this response in their patients.”

If some enlightened physician or hospice worker attempts to discuss what comes after death with a dying patient, he or she risks saying something that conflicts with Scripture – or rather with modern interpretations given to Scripture – and thereby invites sanctions by the hospice chaplain or the individual’s pastor.  Thus, better to say nothing at all.

And so the only alternative is to “live in the moment” and not think about what might come later. We need to repress all thoughts of death, escape into as much fiction as possible, whether on television or in a book, and enjoy those bingo games.

Michael Tymn’s new book The Afterlife Revealed: What Happens After We Die is published this month in paperback and eBook formats by White Crow Books.

The Afterlife Revealed

Next blog June 27-28

Well, I don’t really know what to say about because I don’t have idea about the feeling of dying.

KSS,

Thanks for sharing your experiences. I fully agree.  Clearly, life’s challenges and hardships are our best teacher.

I think this piece really points out how we could be doing a much better job with the subject of end of physical life.  Most of us just want to avoid the subject altogether until we find ourselves facing the passing of someone we love.  Then we tell ourselves we should have lived everyday as if it were the last because we feel we focused on the wrong things during the time we were together.

In my case, my husband passed away in hospice care. I wish I knew then what I know now. I know that “death” is part of life.  Why wish for a prolonged life when your soul/spirit passes to another realm?  Because I have had contact with him through a medium, I know that he was prepared for his passing, that he was not afraid and that he is now free of the pain and limitations.

Apart from that, I learned that we are spirit beings inhabiting a physical body for the purpose of traveling on a “field trip” so that we can learn lessons while we are here. The first decades of my life were trouble free. Did I learn much from that?  Probably not. The last decade has been a minefield and I’ve learned a lot.

I listened to you on the Signs of Life radio show. That’s how I found this blog. Thank you for your work in this area.

Hi, Mike.
thanks for your kind interest on my site!| I checked my website with Google translate and I’ve noticed that it works well. At least the meaning of the articles is safe. Try it!

Claudio,

Yes, I am very familiar with Victor Zammit. I follow his posts every week.  He is doing a great service.

I checked your web site.  It is very interesting.  I only wish I could read Italian. My two years of Latin doesn’t work.

Mike.
Do you know Victor Zammit and his website? He’s a retired Australian Lawyer and THE OBJECTIVE EVIDENCE FOR THE AFTERLIFE is clearly shown by him.
http://www.victorzammit.com/
L,L,S
Claudio

Doubter,

Thank you for your comment.  I agree with you that modern neuroscience hasn’t offered much to support the survival hypothesis, but psychical research and NDE research have given us quite a bit of evidence. It is not evidence that adds up to absolute “proof,” but the evidence for biological evolution falls short of the “absolute” standard as well. I’m not sure there is absolute “proof” of anything. 

The neuroscientist seems to want to analyze it all in a test tube, whereas the evidence for survival is more in the area of courtroom science.  The best evidence for survival was produced by the Victorian scienttists of yesteryear, but it has been for the most part filed away in dust-covered cabinets.  My book, “The Articulate Dead” summarizes much of this research.  Some scientists today are inclined to discount that research for one reason or another, but they do so out of ignorance. 

Anyone really familiar with the old research and the modern research that has supplemented it can see that there is at least evidence meeting the “preponderance” standard of our civil law and even meeting the “Beyond a Reasonable Doubt” standard of our criminal law. Indications are that we need some doubt in there for the “divine plan” to work.

I’m not sure I understand that part of your comment about survival and the “miserable experiences in the end stages.”  If you are implying that an all-loving God would not permit it, I think that is based on a religious conception of God.  It would take too many words here to get into a discussion on that aspect, but it has long been my contention that you don’t have to believe in God to believe in survival.

I very much appreciate your input.

Doubter.
Never considered the idea of reincarnation? I’m sure that it’s the only logical explanation for our sufferings here. Add that we can -before being incarnated- decide with our Guides what kind of teachings we need on this dense, lower planet and the picture is complete. Your Mother had -likely- chosen to suffer for many reasons that I can summarize in to only one: to teach love to you and your family. It’s very hard to love someone who’s ill and needs help and She may have been a Great Spirit who accepted to suffer only for make you progress. Life is eternal and we need more than a body to get our graduation.
Sorry if my English is not very good, I’m Italian.
Love, Light & Serenity,
Claudio

A brilliant post. The only thing is, in the face of modern neuroscience and the other sciences the evidence of psychical research is not sufficient to me for anything but a forlorne hope of survival. Add to that the atrocious human condition with its pervasiveness of innocent suffering, where even if there is an afterlife it seems inconceivable that it could justify the miserable experience of so many people especially in their end stages. I had first hand observation of this with my mother, who died recently after more than ten years of misery, bed-bound but still mentally alert. Considering this, the fear, despair and escapism of the hospice as you depict it seem just to be logical responses to the situation.

Hi, Mike.
Thanks for your kind interest on my modest job. Unluckily my book is only in Italian (Nicola è accanto a me- Mio figlio mi parla dall’aldilà- Piemme Editions) and it’s not in my Editor’s plans to translate it in English. In it I (with the help of a famous journalist) resumed the big amount of stuff that I’ve recorded on my website ( http://www.ampupage.it/ ) since the year 1999 as a result of my “opening” to the Spirituality after the loss of my 6 y.o. son Nicola.
My wife and I had (and still have) many contacts with him and also with other Deceased People, my wife by the means of her own mediumship, I myself applying Bruce Moen’s techniques to explore the higher levels of consciousness. You can take a look at my site clicking on the American Flag and then unzip the html files shown on the window. It’s a long time since its last update, because I have not enough time nor the skills to translate the whole website in English. More,I’ve self-learned your language when I was 40 y.o. (at school, once, we studied French!)with the help of my Internet friends.
If you check your name (or Metgat’s blog) on the search box named “Motore di ricerca” (on the italian home) you will find all of your articles translated in Italian. My readers and I are very grateful to you for your kind permission given to publish them, you’re surely a great Spirit,a very enlightened guy.
Much Love, Light and Serenity.
Claudio

Claudio,

Thank you for your comments.  Is your book available in English?  If so, where?  I just checked Amazon.com and did not see it there. Also, would you mind providing your web site again.  I know I have seen it, but I can’t seem to find it.

P.S:
Useless to say that here the Roman Catholic Church has the monopoly of the Afterlife!
Guess that in a scenario like yours, my book (My Son speaks to me from the afterlife) and my website would be thrown into the stove!
)))))
Claudio

Good article, Mike! My compliments.
Here in Italy the scene is a little different than your, ‘cause we miss Hospices and other public resorts like yours. My patients (I’m a GP)usually die twice: firstly by solitude in their own homes, then by the hand of the “Great Comforter”...
Here in the South many people are illiterate,and there are no chess-games, no bingo’s, no books for them. They live their last years fixing the fireside and cared by alien attenders (Polish, Russian, Albanian), so they can’t neither talk with them because they speak very few words of italian. Their sons are always busy or live very far away, especially in the North from where they came to pay visits very rarely.
I think that your old people live much better than ours. Are we Italians living in an “advanced western nation”? I’m not so sure….
Love, Light & Serenity.
Claudio

Thanks everyone for your comments.  Yes, it is a sad and depressing situation. I faced it with my parents and several other friends and relatives. I tried to reach out and offer them stories that might comfort them, but they wanted nothing to do with it.  Moreover, I didn’t want to confuse my parents by saying things that might conflict with their Catholic faith.  Such conflicting information in those final days might just result in additional confusion.  After all, how could their son know things that the pope doesn’t?

Elene, I forgot to mention that the woman whose eye lids were at half mast and lower lip drooping also had drool running from her chin.

Well done, Mike, if somewhat depressing. Even I, as a medium, am somewhat constrained by cultural norms. We have some good friends, and the wife is
dying from cancer. I once tried to bring up some
possibilities of life after death, but the loving
husband practically bit my head off with a mix of
orthodoxy and skeptical scientism. Ah well; it
nonetheless mystifies me why so much time is given
to making meaning of life when living, and so little is created when dying. Keep up the good work.

Michael,
Very sad commentary on the American culture. Sad but true.  My mother is 101 and my sister and I are trying to take care of her at home.  So far—-so good! but at that age is is difficult if not impossible, after a lifetime of secular and cultural beliefs, to have any discussion with her about death, dying, or the existence of a world of spirit; it is uncomfortable for me too.

Mike, I have to say, that was a really depressing post. Not your fault, though. You’re just telling it like it is.

P.S. I love your blog and have been a regular reader since its inception at the previous site. Please continue the outstanding work.

Mike, excellent article!

I believe that those of us who are firm believers in life after death should engage others in conversation about it whenever we can…one never knows when it is one’s time to return to the otherside.

At the very least, those you speak with will have received somewhat of a “Heads up”!

As a medium, our Spiritist group receives spirit communications by so many spirits that are very confused and have no idea where they are. It is very sad.

Spread the word and don’t worry about what people think of you. If you truly believe in an afterlife, know that you will have done those you have spoken to a great charity.

This may be the most brilliant thing you’ve written!  I could see the scene in the hospice being turned into a macabre, surrealistic play—that would be all too realistic at the same time.

Mike, this is one of your best ever. Thanks.