'Good Grief'

It's appropriate, somehow, that I saw Donna Authers speak about dying the day after my annual meeting with my accountant -- "death and taxes" and all that.  Donna's message, fortunately, is a good bit sunnier, for she's been arguing for some years that death can be "a life-affirming, life-enhancing process."  Who knew?

Donna, who lived across the border in South Salem, New York, for 12 years, spoke on Friday at St. Paul's Church near Four Corners, with her husband Roger -- who manned the book-sale counter -- in tow.  (Personal-connection alert: Roger, my Habitat for Humanity "mentor," sent me down the life-changing Habitat wormhole, from which have yet to emerge.)  Her talk (illustrated by a PowerPoint titled "What Am I To Do?  The Caregiver's Challenge") centered on the idea that the dying have much to teach the living... if only the living will listen and reflect back the hope, and faith and courage, the dying need.

Donna says she grew up with "a paralyzing fear of death," having lost her father (killed during World War II when she was two years old), a sister (seven-month-old Lorraine died of spinal meningitis on Donna's fifth birthday), her uncle Benny (killed by a drunk driver) and a grandfather (by suicide) before she turned 16.  And that fear persisted until she helped her grandmother Angelina pass on -- a woman who turned to Donna when she developed breast cancer late in life, and whose own children were too upset to talk about impending death.  "My grandmother taught me so much about living a full, selfless life with no regrets," Donna says on the the website about her book, A Sacred Walk: Dispelling the Fear of Death and Caring for the Dying.  "Not only through her life, but also through her death."  (The book begins, coincidentally, with her mother's death from ovarian cancer... which I practically witnessed from afar, since I was with Roger, building homes with Habitat in the Dominican Republic, as he agonized over whether to return early. He opted to keep building... and his mother-in-law waited until he returned, on schedule, to die.)

Donna -- who recently beat breast cancer herself -- learned from her grandmother that there is such a thing as "good grief" -- that "tears are watering the seeds of empathy."  Grief, she told the audience of 40 or so at St Paul's, "can strengthen your faith and give you a new sense of purpose."  In end-of-life situations, she said, care-givers can be "God with skin on" -- listeners, supporters, touchers and -- in at least one instance -- toilet-bowl cleaners (details in the book).

Donna has since been involved with hospice programs and the Lutheran-derived Stephen Ministries (which focus on pastoral conselling and care-giving) since retiring from IBM in 1992 (Roger was a IBM partner himself; they moved to Virginia in 2005).  "When you give care," Donna said, "you receive far more.  That's why I wrote the book -- I learned so much from these people, not about death, but about life.  Everthing gets put in perspective.  If we're wise, we learn from their experiences -- we hear the 'shoulda,' 'coulda,' 'woulda,' and we learn from it.  Experience is great... but it take too long to get it!"

"We are not independent people," said Donna in a brief interview at St. Paul's before her talk.  "We are inter-dependent -- that's why God gave us different gifts and talents."  She's quick to note, however, that her view is neither doctrinaire nor even specifically religious.  "This isn't about religion," she says, "but about a relationship."  Knowing her interviewer is agnostic (if "searching"), she leaves off the references to "God" and "faith" you'll find throughout her book... but I, for one, get the idea.  People matter; things, and doctrines, don't.  Instead of talking about her faith, Grandmother Angelina simply lived it... and has passed that view on, quite successfully, to her granddaughter.

Now if only Donna could make paying taxes "a life-affirming, life-enhancing process"....

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