Hospice: Death is important, too

When my mother was dying in hospice from a brain tumor, one day she said to my sister Mary, "People make a lot of fuss over the birth of a baby, but dying is important too."

That stuck in my mind. It is one reason I respect the hospice movement and hospice care. Death is important too, the cycle of life.

There is a Norwegian painter I like, Edvard Munch, who did a series called "Frieze of Life," which depicts the cycle from birth and youth to old age and death. Very powerful. We saw all his work over the years at various museums including the Munch Museum in Oslo.

I think this is a healthy perspective. Apparently my mother did too, but she was always ahead of her time.

I have a friend who volunteers at a hospice center and is part of that loving group who help people face death in a dignified, positive, and relatively comfortable way. My younger sister and brother were there with Mom in Denver when the end came. My husband and I visited from Chicago a few weeks before, but we were far away and the end fell on the shoulders of Mary and Rex, and the staff. Rex, the youngest, was holding her hand when she died.

While in hospice, Mom told my sister she was being treated like a queen by the staff - given all her favorite foods, ice cream, chocolates. She knew what was approaching. That is a very positive feature of hospice care - honesty and giving people a chance to understand, talk about it, and express their wishes for after death.

The Dutch people have always had a healthy approach to old age and death. I've always admired that. I'm not Dutch but have been to Holland a lot.

In the little villages, starting from the 1600s, maybe earlier, they built residential retreats called hoffyas, which were places to live for the elderly people clustered around an inner shared courtyard.

It was not a nursing home; it was right in the heart of the village where residents could just walk right out the exterior courtyard door to the main street of the village; could walk to the town square market, church, and cafes and see other friends. It was not isolated or institutional.

The tradition was that, at a certain age, the elderly handed over the family home to the next generation, let the younger couple live there, and moved to the Hoffya, but still were close by the family home and involved in regular village life.

And when they died, they were not alone. They were with friends and close to family. It's a nice model, fits the cycle of life.

The point is - people need to be allowed to recognize and come to terms with their own death. Sometimes it is sudden and relatively unexpected. But in many cases there is a prolonged process of illness and sliding toward death.

There are many things one can do to help your loved one:

• Talk to them, tell the truth, and express love and give, emotional comfort and spend time together.

• Hold hands, read to them, whatever is soothing.

• Remember old times, and let them talk about it.

• Understand their wishes for next steps after death

• Consider hospice care. It's very positive. Sometimes hospice staff come to the home. Or hospice may be at a small residential medical facility. Either way it will help your loved one and you too.

Hospice those last few weeks will make it more possible for your loved one to face death - and memories for you to handle your grief, and eventually help you manage long-term grief.

• Susan Anderson-Khleif of Sleepy Hollow has a Ph.D. in family sociology from Harvard, taught at Wellesley College, and is a retired Motorola executive. Contact her at sakhleif@comcast.net or see her blog longtermgrief.tumblr.com.