The Ministry Of Presence

I sit beside a dying stranger. My hands, notorious for being cold, feel warm clasped around his large fingers and their knotted joints. His cracked lips and tongue are met by the wet rattle of his breath.

He’s suffering. I’m watching him.

I had signed up for a volunteer program called “No one dies alone” to be a companion to those who had no one to comfort them as they left the world.

As I was training for this position, we were given a long list of the natural (though, often disturbing) acts that precede death. Standing in a brightly lit conference room, a nurse gave us some practical pointers, “You may want to bring a mentholated rub along with you to put under your nose. The body as it prepares to die knows that it no longer needs to absorb energy for food. It can quickly abandon the process of digestion. Frankly, it’s not pleasant, for you or for them. Menthol helps if you’re disturbed by the smell.”

She somehow delivered the news that we could expect our clients to shit themselves with a graceful stoicism that can only accompany death.

Her advice almost deterred me from volunteering at all, but it was followed by a piece of wisdom from the hospital’s head clergy that assured me I was in the right place.

“You’ll often feel the urge to help them. To take away the pain. But removing pain is not your job. Your job is simply to witness. To be a companion to them when no one else is. To bring them the ministry of presence.”

Having spent years of my life being mortified by my own mortality, this was what I was here for. I wanted to bear witness to the dying process as a form of meditation and healing for me, as much as it was an act of service for the people I sat with.

And now, as I sat with this dying man, I gave us both the gift of nonintervention. Not trying to change or prevent the inevitable. To allow space for the most natural and unavoidable suffering.

I watch as each flicker of fighting is followed by an overdrawn pause. His breath is strained with work. The type of breath that before I had previously only seen in birth and sex, now accompanied death.

He won’t die tonight as I sit with him. It’s not a medical insight, just a practiced evaluation from my previous sits with the dying. I observe that his skin is lightly tinted with color and it’s still grasping for his cheekbones. They’ll hold together a few more days.

He twists in front of me. One boney knee tries to find a soft place to land as his eyes wrinkle with purpose. There is nothing to be done but observe and encourage as he does the work of dying.

He strains to keep his breath within his body and reaches his other hand out to grasp at invisible fraying strings. Strings that perhaps are anchoring his thoughts to his body as he helplessly tries to get them to stay.

“We’re doing the same work”, I whisper to myself. “We’re both trying to keep things together.”

I’ve spent most of my life trying to keep things closely bound so they won’t change. So that nothing will ever leave.

I think to myself, “Who will we become when we can no longer resist the separation? Who would we be now if neither of us was trying?”

A stillness blankets us and his breathing stops.

I’ve forgotten my place. I’m here to witness.

I hold my breath to match his.

I witness.

He takes a large and rattling gasp of air.

We both resume our work.