In the Midst of Life

Mother of a convent I know well, told me that Sister K had suffered a severe cerebral haemorrhage and was taken to the local hospital where the bleeding continued. When the Reverend Mother arrived at the hospital, the staff had Sister K on a trolley, and were on the point of transferring her to the neurological surgery unit of the City Hospital several miles away. Reverend Mother, who was an experienced nurse and midwife, said, ‘I could see at once she was dying, so I said to the staff nurse, “Look, she is not going to recover. Is this necessary? Can you not put her back in bed and leave her to die in peace and with dignity? I will stay with her.” And they did. Sister K died peacefully and prayerfully a few hours later.’
    In preparation for this book, I visited the archives of the Royal College of Nursing in Edinburgh. The archivist told me that her sister had trained in Dublin at a time when nuns ran many of thehospitals. She said that the nuns always seemed to know when someone was going to die, and they weren’t afraid of death, they knew how to handle it. On the same visit, I also spoke to several nurses and care assistants. In the course of conversation, a senior cardiac nurse said, ‘Death in hospital is a violent event,’ and the others agreed with her.
    Most emphatically, we
don’t
know how to handle it. It’s no good blaming the medical profession. There is a collective responsibility here. We have lost the ideal of reverence at the hour of death, and put our faith in science and technology instead. That is what has transformed the natural and peaceful ending of life into a violent event. *

 
     
    ‘Howpeople die remains in the memory of those who live on’
     
    —
Dame Cicely Saunders
     

 
    Beatrice is a friend of mine. She and her husband are farmers, and I rang her to order some meat for the weekend. She told me that the family had had a very stressful time.
    ‘My mother died nine days ago. She was seventy and had suffered a heart attack. She’d had one twelve years ago when she was only fifty-seven, but had recovered, though she had to take it easy. She knew the heart wall was thin, but she was OK.
    ‘My sister Kelly went to her house to take her shopping, and found her dead in her chair. Kelly dialled 999. The voice that answered ordered her to lift our mother on to the floor and start resuscitation by compressing the sternum to restart her heart. Kelly obeyed. While she was carrying out the instruction she heard a crack from the ribcage. She says she will never forget that crack. Two men arrived very quickly and cut off Mum’s nightdress and started work. Kelly telephoned me, and I came. It took me about twenty minutes to get there. As soon as I walked in, I could see Mum was dead – I’m a farmer, I see death all the time, and there’s no mistaking it. The men were working away with their equipment. I pleaded with them, “Stop it. Can’t you see she’s dead?’ They just replied, “We’ve got to. We can’t stop yet.” I shouted back, “Well, you won’t be doing her any favours even if you do bring her back to life. Her brain will be dead by now.” But they wouldn’t stop. Eventually, the ambulance arrived, and then the paramedics took over.
    ‘It was a dreadful time. My poor sister – she’s in such a state of shock. She says she can’t get the sound of that crack out of her head. I don’t know when she will get over it.’
    Beatrice was talking fast, the words tumbling out. Then she paused and spoke more slowly and thoughtfully. ‘The trouble is, we’d never discussed it, never asked Mum what we should do ifshe had another heart attack. We all knew it was possible – in fact, if I’m honest, we knew it was quite likely after the last one. But that was twelve years ago, and I suppose we had put it out of our minds. We
should
have discussed it. I think everyone should. It would have saved her, and us, from all that dreadful business. I don’t like to think what my poor sister is going through. She blames herself, of course, but it wasn’t her fault. I think everyone should discuss these things.’
    It was a couple of months before I managed to speak to Kelly. I had asked, but perhaps she did not want to talk to me or anyone else so soon. But a couple of months later, after she had been on holiday, she felt ready to re-live that fateful morning.
    Kelly told me, as Beatrice had, that she had driven to the house to take her mother shopping, and found her