Editorial: Bringing peace, dignity to the dying
Dying is hard enough. Dying of a protracted disease or just wearing out in your old age in a nursing home can be a frightening, bewildering, painful and lonely experience.
As much as the dedicated and compassionate people who care for the sick and dying in nursing homes try to provide a peaceful end, they can do only so much. After all, their patients lose much more than their lives. They often lose pride, a sense of dignity, a sense of self, a feeling of connection to families, even reality.
While some are accepting of their fate, many — with apologies to Dylan Thomas — do not go gentle into that good night. They rage against the dying of the light.
If you’ve lost a loved one and spent time in a nursing home with him or her you’ve seen the despair, the hopelessness, the separation, the anger. You’ve probably seen some people whose visitor logs are empty.
You’ve probably also seen the group activities — bingo, balloon volleyball, trivia and puzzle-making contests. Or visits from therapy dogs, brought in by special people who volunteer their time and a measure of their pets’ love to bring a smile to the faces of those who truly need it.
What you probably haven’t seen or heard before, though, is a cellist serenading a person in her dying hours.
Staff Writer Elisabeth Mistretta in Monday’s paper told the story of Pippa Downs of Wheaton, a cellist since she was a child, who through an interesting set of circumstances found herself playing for groups of people and then doing one-on-one concerts for terminally ill patients at Wynscape Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation in Wheaton, easing them on their way.
Downs learned about the power of music when she played to soothe her stepfather on his deathbed.
And Jennifer Franks, the life enrichment director at Wynscape, knew of music’s therapeutic effects.
She told the story of a patient in her final hours whose family couldn’t make it in time to say goodbye. Franks and her staff surrounded the woman and played a CD of her favorite music. “It was the most beautiful experience I had,” Franks told Mistretta. “She didn’t die alone, and she died with pride. It was dignified.”
“Our residents need to have the same experience at the end of life that they had throughout,” Wynscape Administrator Aimee Musial noted.
That’s not just something for nursing homes to worry about. That’s on all of us.
There are myriad opportunities to volunteer at nursing homes and plenty of ways you can share some joy with others there every time you visit your loved one. You don’t need a cello to do it. And visiting often is important.
As difficult as death can be for the living, it’s not nearly as tough as it is for the dying. How you choose to handle that — or not handle it — could affect you the rest of your life, and it could help bring a beautiful end to that of someone else.