A story about discovering life in the shadow of death
In the 90’s, then 22 year old me volunteered at an AIDS hospice. As a young gay man, I felt a duty to help and to bear witness to lives not so different from my own being snuffed out before their time. The suddenness and speed with which the illness progressed was frightening and there was so much fear and confusion. I volunteered because I wanted to help, I wanted there to be a face from the next generation showing up to help the generation that had created the world we were stepping into. What I didn’t understand is that I was there to receive a lesson that guides me decades later.
When I signed up, I had the idea that this would be a hard, draining emotional wringer. I vaguely expected to be handing out Kleenex as one of my primary jobs. While it was hard, while there were plenty of bleak moments and an emotional wringer… I’d misjudged everything about life, death and the place called hospice where the two meet.
When faced with an inescapable near term end to your life, there’s a clarity that dawns on you. There is a magic to being freed from the worries of a tomorrow that is no longer yours to worry about. When you have weeks or months to live — you suddenly see what’s actually meaningful. Here’s a hint… your job, pointless. Your great looks, useless. Your fame and fortune, more ephemeral than you are. Because none of that can save you or make your life better in ways that actually matter.
Here is the wisdom I was given by a dying man, when I asked him about his serenity:
In the face of an insurmountable situation, you have two choices of action. You can fight with every fiber of your being and die exhausted, defeated and angry. Or. You can surrender to the river of life and make peace with where it is taking you. The destination is the same.
The journey however is altogether different.
Death isn’t a simple transition. Exiting this life with all its complications and illusions is not simple. But preparing emotionally, psychologically and spiritually for it defines the experience you will have, and it shapes the quality of the time you spend here. The lesson I learned from the dying man is the same any dying man will tell you. There is no tomorrow. Life only happens in the today, and when there’s a finite end to your time, it’s important to properly live what you have left.
In those years, I saw not only pain and sorrow, but I witnessed lives reimagined. I saw people find purpose in their condition and become leaders. I saw people reunited with their estranged families and old wounds healed. I saw artists and poets materialize out of lives of addiction and dissolution. I saw people find meaning at the end of life they were never able to when the future felt endless.
We are all living this reality. Our futures are no longer endless, but have a very finite, near-term end. There are a number of cycles in our world whose endings are converging in our very near future which are going to challenge our survival on this planet globally. Yet, by ignoring this we are robbing ourselves of the chance to walk out improved by this experience. Out of fear or denial we are bypassing hospice.
It’s time to put down the material distractions we’ve made for ourselves … no one ever goes to their grave wishing they’d worked a little longer. This is the time to follow the path you didn’t think was worth following, but secretly miss. This is the time to spend time with those you miss the most. This is the time to live whatever life is actually fulfilling to you, because what we sacrificed for a big house and fancy belongings, in the end was worth more than all the baubles it bought.
This is not an instruction to abandon your responsibilities and sink into hedonism and escape, though those have their value and shouldn’t be ignored. This is the time for a personal inventory. This is the time to assess if you’ve lived a fulfilling life. To ask yourself, if it all stopped tomorrow, is there something you’ve put off? Is there something you are going to regret not seeing or doing or fixing? We’re not looking at an infinite runway anymore. Regardless of how bad you believe it will be or not, the set of assumptions we call “normal” is giving way under our very feet. Don’t assume next year will resemble this one, and understand that this is just getting warmed up. This introspection is the work of hospice. It’s coming to terms with your life and choices, digest them, and make peace. It’s harder than it seems, but more rewarding than you imagine.
It’s not time to curl up and die.
It’s time to hurry up and LIVE.
Find out who you are. Find out what you are. Take the time to dig into what you really are… because the things ahead will be much easier if you start understanding what you are beyond what you see in the mirror. Live each hour consciously, seize it, savor it. It has so much we rush past, chasing illusions.
It’s time for hospice.
In the face of the insurmountable, surrender and introspection is the only answer that makes any sense.
