At the end of life, love is still the answer
“In the evening of our life, we shall be judged on love alone.” (St. John of the Cross, Dichos, 64)
Silently meditating upon these words of the mystic while attending the deaths of hundreds of hospice patients over the years, I’ve come to see how true it is that we are never more vulnerable than “at the hour of our death.”
It seems this common vulnerability makes its most poignant, agonizing appeal to that love spoken of by the saint, as we are drawn to the reckoning of eternity. The dying person’s plea for love, if left unconsidered, intensifies spiritual distress and can make transition from this life as painful as the suffering caused by terminal illness.
Some patients seek the emotional comfort that only reconciliation can bring, others desperately need to receive or offer the forgiveness that quiets a writhing conscience, and still others knew little or no compassion in life and cry out for proof of its existence before death.
Sophia was 87, stout and cheerful with strong hands and the noble features of ancient Northern Triangle tribes etched deeply into her swarthy, serene face. Fiercely independent, she insisted on living alone so as never to burden the children she adored. One night, a stray bullet hurled her onto the cold kitchen floor of her Greenspoint trailer home. Pulling the phone cord until it crashed onto the linoleum, she dialed her neighbor who called for help. Already immunocompromised, within days Sophia was “terminal”, and “in hospice.”
When she awoke in the ICU, her face had already taken on a luminous joy, as if she had beheld and been transformed by some unspeakable beauty while comatose. I asked her why, on the night of the shooting, she had called her friend instead of 911. “I felt my life slipping away” she whispered, “and I didn’t want to die alone.”
Only Sophia’s friend could judge her “on love alone” in that moment. As able and professional as the first responders could be, they couldn’t lovingly remind Sophia of a lifetime of sacrifices for her children and grandchildren. They couldn’t extol the courage of single mother who had fled a civil war and swum the Rio Grande heavy with child, and with a toddler slung across her back in
a papoose. Only a friend could make all of that love present in the absence of her children hundreds of miles away, and now as the shadows lengthened on the evening of Sophia’s life, it was that “love alone” that could assuage her agony.
Those in hospice, whether our loved ones, friends or patients, whether lucid or unresponsive, cry out for our disposition of loving judgment — a disposition consisting of a silent awe at what the dying bring with them to the end of life, and a nonjudgmental compassion at how they bear it. This disposition is perhaps the greatest gift we give to the dying, and can be the key to helping them “rest in peace.”
Judgment “on love alone,” in the mystic’s view, allows no place to condemnation or accusation. It cancels old debts, dismisses past grievances and vacates old sentences. It is a compassionate review of life, of love, of giving and of gratitude. It is about being present for the dying and facilitating their singular moment and opportunity to reconcile, to forgive, to be forgiven and to love.
In her last seven days, Sophia spoke only a few phrases, but all of them included the word “love.” Her children arrived in time to bear witness to her life of self-giving and present all its evidence in their own joyful lives and rewarding careers. That’s what her soul desired in the waning evening of her life, and that love was her door into eternity.
National Hospice Month is a yearly remembrance and appreciation of what hospice care can provide a person in the “evening of life”; it is also an invitation for those closest to the patient to embody that most necessary virtue for a soul’s transition into eternity, and even become a portal of love through which they can pass, as we judge them “on love alone.”