Hospice Isn't the Opposite of Hope
Though Red did say, "Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.”
My obvious hope on this newsletter is informing people about hospice.
I speak personally. A hospice cared for Dad. My mother, though never a hospice patient, received feedback from a hospice nurse that proved crucial to my family’s decisions. (We also “rejected” another potential hospice because their admitting nurse was—being polite—not very professional.)
I speak professionally from my past. On numerous occasions, visiting patients as their hospice chaplain, I witnessed the importance of quiet time with loved ones in the final days. As hard as it was to admit, one more round of chemotherapy or another frantic trip to the emergency room would only put off the inevitable for a brief, painful time. Wasn’t it better to remain home?
I speak professionally from another piece of my past in grief support groups. On numerous occasions, the ones grieving shared with me how life-changing the final days became with a dying loved one. They learned about themselves (and liked what they learned about their strength and patience) as they focused on caregiving.
I speak realistically about hospice and our mortality. Modern medication, fervent prayers, high-tech treatments, the skilled hands of a surgeon, or the healing properties of an exotic herb may lead to remission or even complete cures . . .
But do you think your ill parent or spouse is somehow immortal?
Do you think you are?
But forget all any fancy or fanciful philosophy about human limitations. Hope, after all, matters!
If you’re a person of faith, won’t entering hospice care twist your prayers for healing into lies? How can you claim to trust God if you “give up?” If you’re someone who relies on modern science and has confidence in an oncologist or neurosurgeon’s arsenal of cutting-edge tools, aren’t you yanking away the proverbial rug on their expertise by choosing hospice?
Doesn’t God answer prayers? The “Good Book”—whichever sacred text you cherish—says so!
When the physician offers a new drug regime with a 1% or a 20% success rate, why wouldn’t you be among the 1 in 100 or 1 in 5 patients with good results? Someone wins . . . why not you?
How can you not hope?
In Shawshank Redemption, a film based on Stephen King’s novella, the character Red bluntly tells his prison pal Andy, “Let me tell you something my friend. Hope is a dangerous thing. Hope can drive a man insane.”
In Andy’s case, after playing music through the prison’s sound system, and then paying the price for his misdeeds with a stint in solitary confinement, he still embraced the value of hope. To have hope, even with a life sentence in prison. To have hope, just to make it through another miserable day. The iron bars and the angry guards may keep the body contained, but within your heart and mind—in those places no one else controls—you still have . . . hope!
But wasn’t Red right?
Isn’t hope dangerous?
Of course! But isn’t hope better than complacency or procrastination or self-doubt or a legion of other negatives that only encourage futility?
And so, I hope you or your loved one avoids hospice as long as possible. I hope you seek every cure, get every second—and third and fourth—opinion, pray every prayer, swallow every pill, and achieve that extra day and month and year of life. [Warning: spoiler alert.] Isn’t Shawshank Redemption such a beloved film because Andy’s hope, persistence, and hard work lead him to freedom? Without his “dangerous” hope, he’d have died behind bars.
So please, keep hoping as you and your loved one wait in another doctor’s office. Keep hoping as you prowl the web for the newest experimental drug trial. Keep hoping while advocating for your beloved . . . for if you give up, they may also surrender.
But hospice isn’t the opposite of hope.
Hospice care isn’t giving up, failing, losing, or any other dreary phrase of grim comparison.
The hope found in hospice isn’t based on treatment statistics or pretending you’ll never die. We all crave a large quantity of many days, but the quality of this day also matters. It is scary, even dangerous, to choose the comfort care of hospice over a medical or miracle cure because then only the patient controls her or his hope.
Hope becomes:
Precious time with loved ones.
Resting rather than restless planning.
Creating intimate memories rather than scheming for a splashy “bucket list” trip to Paris.
Letting others care for you (though this is so difficult for stubborn humans!)
But who am I kidding?
Won’t dying and hospice always be equated with hopelessness?
When serving a church years ago, I received an out-of-the-blue call. Not a member, the caller immediately (and bluntly) announced she was Buddhist. But her mother was a Christian and dying from cancer. Could I visit her? Soon after, I arrived at the home of a “stranger.” The mother had stopped treatments. Hospice would soon be contacted. Was there any hope left? I visited several times. We chatted, held hands, prayed, and joked with her daughter about how easily they irritated each other and how they loved each other more than words could express.
Nothing much happened; everything happened. Hope thrived in that precious time. Hope, dangerous and essential, was part of their conversation until a mother and child shared a final laugh and tear and kiss.
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My book, A Companion for the Hospice Journey is available at Amazon.