We panic to do more

But how little we truly need

Note: Please remember that we will not gather for Contemplative Chapel today, April 24. We’ll resume next Wednesday, May 1.

As I type this, a friend of mine’s mother is dying. She is a remarkable person whom I have known only briefly but who has inspired me with her gentleness, strength, intelligence, humility, and abiding faith.  We met only briefly when I was in Texas, but we have talked by phone, emailed, and corresponded in the old-fashioned way by pen and paper. 

We’ve talked about Psalms that have been calming and reassuring for us: Psalms 23, 42, 46, 121, and 139:1-11, for example. And she even sent me a little book on the 23^rd Psalm that has long been a comforting companion in her spiritual journey.  I had thought I was supposed to be helping her, but she has, unknowingly, given me more than I could ever give her.

Now, she is entering that liminal space where we’ll all be one day. I wish I had known her longer.

My friend has kept me abreast of his mother’s condition, and every time he reaches out, his deep and abiding love for his mother permeates everything he says. She is very close to the end now, so there is some understandable anxiety about how to be helpful. With a loved one who is dying, “we panic to do more for them.”

It has all brought to mind a poem that has moved me for years. It feels like a living presence in my soul at times like this. I sent it to my friend.

Notice how often the word perhaps occurs in the poem, pointing to the cloud of unknowing that envelops us at times like this. But notice how the uncertainty dissolves in the last line, as if even in our times of profound unknowing there is a kind of abiding certainty:

Bedside Manners 

How little the dying seem to need—
A drink perhaps, a little food,
A smile, a hand to hold, medication,
A change of clothes, an unspoken
Understanding about what's happening.
You think it would be more, much more,
Something more difficult for us
To help with in this great disruption,
But perhaps it's because as the huge shape
Rears up higher and darker each hour
They are anxious that we should see it too
And try to show us with a hand-squeeze.

We panic to do more for them,
And especially when it's your father,
And his eyes are far away, and your tears
Are all down your face and clothes, 
And he doesn't see them now, but smiles
Perhaps, just perhaps because you're there.
How little he needs. Just love. More Love.

by Christopher Wiseman, from In John Updike's Room