“How did it go today?”
Ben and Mary were studies in contrast. Ben was very quiet and reserved. When I engage someone like this, I never know what it means. I am now wise enough to know that everyone reveals his or her story slowly, and patience is a virtue practiced over and over again by listening with your heart. Sometimes a quiet reserve can signal resistance or a lack of trust, but with Ben it was contentment and comfort, a kind of inner peace. He was introspective, a natural contemplative—a monk who was never a monk.
On the other hand, Mary was a case study in anxiety. She talked rapidly and incessantly. She had a very traditional piety, consisting of regular rosary devotions and novenas. Over the course of my relationship with Ben, she kept on praying for a miracle and pressed me with materials about miraculous healing. Above all, she kept on insisting that Ben needed to talk to a priest about his cancer, but when the three of us were together, she did nearly all the talking and always referred to Ben in the third person—as if he wasn’t there.
After my first visit, Ben and I met alone, and he unfolded his life story. He told me that his liver cancer had been diagnosed three years earlier. He underwent chemotherapy treatments, and he reported simply, “I do what they tell me to do.” He talked about selling their old home in Michigan, moving to Louisville, and being near his daughter and grandson. Since he had stopped driving, he now felt immobile and isolated. He knew the way to the church and to his daughter’s house and grandson’s house. “I know maybe two other people,” he said. He missed gardening, a favorite hobby, especially because the grounds of their patio home were maintained by a homeowners’ association. He compensated by watching the groundskeeper work and by caring for several houseplants on the sunporch.
“I am at peace with this—my disease. I’m going to die,” he told me. His real anxiety was his concern about the impact of his death on his wife, his daughter, and his grandson, with whom he shared a very close bond. “I want to live mostly for my grandson,” he said, adding that he really missed fishing with him. “While I worry about Mary and my daughter, that’s not where I’m invested. I’d like to spend more years with him.”
Ben, the contemplative, was someone who was very honest about his disease and knew it would result in his death. He was very cooperative with his doctors. He was at peace with his disease and with meeting God. He didn’t put much stock in his wife’s prayers for “a miracle,” he told me, and what he couldn’t handle was his wife’s anxiety. “I find it so tiring to listen to her,” he said, “so sometimes I quote Scripture to her: ‘Be not afraid.’ That works, but not for long.”
I gradually learned about something else that weighed on Ben’s mind: he had lost touch with his brothers and sisters. When Ben’s mother was dying, Ben and Mary moved her into their home, and Mary provided care for her until she died. I could feel the pain in his heart as he described the estrangement with his siblings. Whatever occurred during this caregiving for Ben’s mother, whether intentional or unintentional, it created a division in the family. Ben and Mary were estranged from Ben’s siblings, and the resentment and hurt stretched throughout the family. While Ben battled his cancer in Louisville, only one of his siblings called. None visited. Ben suffered from a sad and painful grief. And when he died, only one brother came to the funeral.
That was the only note of regret I ever heard from Ben. But I soon realized that our times together on the sunporch were sacred times for him. That was his sacred space. As our conversations continued, Ben talked more freely about his life, his dreams about his grandson’s future, his regrets, and his hopes. He did not let his disease control his life. He dealt with it directly while understanding that life was not a survival contest; it was a journey back to God. His impending death did not frighten him. He said to me, “I know that death is simply the last step in my journey home to God. I want to make that step with confidence in Him.”
Ben began to go downhill rapidly after our first few months of conversations. He had hospital admissions for pneumonia and renal failure and received transfusions. While he was in the hospital, he was usually heavily medicated and asleep or able to communicate only briefly. I prayed with him, sometimes asking his family for time alone. On one of his last hospitalizations, he asked that I pray for two things: first, for strength to endure his suffering and death, and second, for a sense of consolation and peace for his wife, his daughter, and his grandson. He never asked for prayers for his siblings.
Seven months after I met him, Ben died. I wasn’t present at his death, but I visited with him twice during the last four days of his life. When he was close to dying, the family called me. Hospice had been called in, and he was nonresponsive. I anointed him again and prayed quietly for a peaceful journey home to God. His death was very hard on Mary; she was in shock and disbelief. She wasn’t prepared for that fatal moment, and grief overwhelmed her.
During that last visit, I broached the subject of Ben’s funeral with Mary and their daughter. Mary was still in denial about Ben’s death and said she had made no plans. I worked with his daughter and grandson and the parish bereavement committee on the plans for Ben’s funeral Mass. It included his grandson’s reading one of the Scripture selections.
After the funeral, Mary praised me effusively. She said, “You walk on water.” She showered me with gifts, both then and later, and she said repeatedly,“You were there for us.” Ironically, I may have helped Mary by creating some distance between Ben and her. In retrospect, I can see that I put myself between them and perhaps reduced Mary’s anxiety, which threatened to envelop both of them. It created a sacred space for Ben as well, even though he had been preparing himself for his death for a long time before I met him. He was confident in God’s mercy. He knew it was time for him to die.
But the anxiety of his wife and daughter was stressful for him. He worried about how they would deal with his death. He was also afraid of the family tension between him and his siblings over their mother’s death. “Did we do the right thing?” he would ask. When I reassured him of God’s love, I asked him to surrender his doubt to God and trust God’s mercy. He said, “Then I hope and pray that God’s mercy will flow over all of us.”
I wish I had had one more conversation with Ben before he died. Frequently, when a person is near death, I speak to them quietly—one on one—but in Ben’s case that conversation never happened. On my last visit, just the day before he died, I remember whispering in his ear, “Leave your anxiety about everyone in your family behind. Don’t hold on. Let go. God is waiting.” Ben did let go, and he found God waiting for him.
St. Benedict, the founder of monasticism, said, “Listen and attend with the ear of your heart.”
In so many ways, Ben instinctively knew that. He had received the gift of knowing how to listen. He attended to God with the ear of his heart. While others about him feared his death, he was not afraid. He feared only their anxiety and loss when he died.
He was a contemplative who had never lived in a monastery, and yet he knew how to contemplate the mystery of God’s love and to rejoice in it.
He died in peace, hoping that his loved ones would know the peace he had found.
Reflection
The challenges of living through the last stages of a terminal illness are daunting. It is a daily struggle to claim a direction for your soul journey to God amid the compelling voices of loved ones, doctors, family, and professional caregivers. For Ben, what remained was his grief over what will not be. Grief laden with anxiety is toxic; for a contemplative soul, it is painful beyond measure. It is love scarred by past events and burdened by time running out. As Ben slowly surrendered his grief and anxiety to God, his peace grew. It was his final gift to the family he loved.
Prayer
Lord, free us from the anxiety of our
