In the Midst of Life

I’ll leave that thing there while I’m gone; I won’t be needing it.’ It’s a very odd experience – the body is there, but the person has gone. No one would say, ‘I
am
a body’; we say, ‘I
have
a body’. So what, therefore, is the ‘I’? The‘I’ or perhaps ‘me’ has just stepped into the other room. It is a strange feeling, and I can’t describe it in any other way. Another thing that is strange is that the body left behind looks smaller, quite a lot smaller, than the living person. The face looks the same, but calm and relaxed, wrinkles and worry lines are smoothed, and a feeling of serenity pervades the entire room. But the person, the ‘I’, has gone.
    It also greatly helps the process of mourning to see the body after death, and preferably to assist in the laying out. Nurses used to do the job when I was young girl, and we always asked the relatives if they wanted to help. Nurses don’t do it any more, but anyone can ask the morticians if they can assist, and they will not be refused, even though it would be unusual these days. Respectful laying-out is all part of the ritual to which a dead person is entitled. Handling a dead body is not a repugnant or frightening experience and, somehow, it helps to accept the fact that the soul of that person has gone if you treat the body with reverence and respect before it is finally disposed of by cremation or burial.
    The husband of one of my dearest friends died in hospital of lung cancer, but she was with him most of the time in the last few weeks. She told me, ‘I was with him, and I could see that he was going to die, so I pulled the curtains round and lay on the bed beside him. I took him in my arms (he weighed almost nothing, he was so thin) and whispered to him and kissed him. He knew I was there. Then he just stopped breathing, but I didn’t move. I stayed there with him until he was quite cold. Then I got up and went to one of the nurses and told them that he had gone. The nurse came to check, and touched him.
    ‘“But he’s quite cold,” she said. “When did he die?”
    ‘“It was at half past two – I know because I looked at my watch.”
    ‘“But you should have come and called one of the staff; it’s nearly four o’clock now,” the nurse said.
    ‘“No, I wanted to be alone with him, quietly, lovingly, giving him time for his soul to leave his body.”
    ‘“This is most unusual,” remarked the nurse, and gave me a veryfunny look. But I didn’t care what anyone thought. I knew that he was safely on his way to wherever we go after we die, and I left the hospital, happy.’
    Counsellors tell me that, increasingly, they encounter guilt associated with grief in bereavement. This is often because most people die in hospitals and not at home, and those left behind feel they have let the loved one down. They feel a sense of shame that he or she died alone, in the care of strangers. In my own life, I know that I still feel guilty, after thirty years, that my poor mother died alone, even though I also know that I was forcibly prevented by a couple of strong orderlies from entering the resuscitation room in which she died. In contrast, in 1996, my mother-in-law died at home in her daughter’s arms, and she described this as a beautiful, peaceful death. My sister-in-law was very close to her mother, but her bereavement has been eased by the knowledge that she did her duty, with love, right to the end. When talking about it, she repeatedly uses the word ‘beautiful’.
    Many hospitals, and all hospices, now try to offer support to enable people to die at home. Support for the relatives, I mean, because it is not always easy, especially if the last stages of illness are prolonged. To be able to die at home is what most people want and, if it is possible, close relatives want it also. There have been many attempts to reverse the national trend towards a hospitalised death in recent years, such as the National End of Life Care Programme, the Liverpool Care Pathway, the Gold Standard for the Care of the Dying. Every hospital trust now has such a policy in place.
    Charles, an old friend of mine, died at home in December 2005. His wife, Dorothy, was with him.
    Talking with a widow shortly after her husband’s death can be a moving experience. There is no pretence, no effort to make an impression, just the loss and the depth of memories. Sentences are broken, disjointed, started and not finished. Thoughts are random. I will use