Witchvox Article:
Why Would You Do THAT?
Author: Jenny Schumaker [a WitchVox Sponsor]
Posted: January 27th. 2008
I volunteer with the dying. No One Dies Alone is a national program in hospitals wherein a group of trained volunteers is on call 24/7 to sit with and offer comfort to people who are, for whatever reason, dying alone.
We also come in when friends and/or family need a break from their own vigils and would like to know that someone will be by the side of the dying person so that they can try to get some much needed rest in a very stressful time.
This commentary isn't really about this awesome program, though I ask anyone who thinks they can do it to go see if their local hospital has a chapter. It's about the reason behind why I do it, and why it shouldn't be a shock to Pagans or anyone else that people do this kind of volunteer work.
Believe it or not I actually enjoy this work. There are inevitable moments of sadness. There are times when it's physically and emotionally challenging, too.
Usually I take the "graveyard" shift, not even arriving at the hospital until at least midnight. Hospital room chairs are notoriously uncomfortable. Sometimes patients are awake, aware, and in distress. Usually there are a lot of machines, and sometimes patients are full of various tubes. It's usually too bright or too dark in the rooms. But uniformly, the staff is happy to see us.
They are gracious and accommodating, especially if they know you're a new volunteer. I have yet to relive a family member at a death vigil, but one woman I sat with had only her best friend of nearly 80 years to be with her. The friend could not drive at night and could not stay at the hospital, even though death was hours away.
To her, my presence meant she could say goodbye and that a real person would be there just for her friend. I would do what she couldn't, and when I had to leave somebody else would take my place.
I shed a few tears with her, and I felt very, very blessed to be there. It was my privilege to witness a deep and abiding love between two friends and provide a comforting presence for both of them. When no one else is around, even if the patient is unconscious, I still know that I'm providing a service through my presence, to both patient and staff.
All of the people I trained with cited a desire for service, to be able to give back from their experiences, as their main reason for volunteering with the program. There was a war veteran who had seen a lot of death years ago, a few lay-ministers, a nurse, and others. Everyone had experienced the death of someone close to him or her.
Most of the trainees in my group noted that they believe that death is a life-passage or rite of passage, and that it should be attended by others just like other rites of passage. This very pleasantly surprised me. Out of a group of maybe fifteen, only two of us were non-Christian, another of us was Jewish.
These were blessedly not the same type of people who attended the church I grew up in (only one older man seemed to be under the impression that he was there to talk to the dying about Jesus, and he was quickly but gently disabused of that notion by our pastoral care sponsor). This isn't the attitude toward death I had previously encountered in Christianity.
When I first read about the NODA program in the local newspaper, I immediately thought of how well suited Pagans are for this kind of volunteer work. Generally, we already come with the assumption that death is part of the cycle of life. It's natural. It will happen to everyone.
It isn't something to necessarily fear, though the unknown can be a bit frightening in and of itself. We believe that there is no default "hellfire" setting on death, and we usually have strong opinions against proselytizing, especially to people in distress.
People dying in hospitals come from all walks of life, and in a public hospital there is (supposedly) no over-riding religious doctrine. A lot of organizations that take volunteers are Christian-oriented. While that doesn't bother me in particular, I do know Pagans who would rather not, and I know from other people's stories that not all such organizations are friendly toward openly Pagan volunteers.
NODA doesn't require formal religious training or expect any religious persuasion. At my local hospital it is administered by the Pastoral Care Department which has the duty of ministering to the spiritual needs of all people of all or no religion. Training is provided. I saw it as an open invitation for personal growth, and to use my specifically Wiccan world-view for good. Also, as a Wiccan minister, aka a priestess, I believe that my duty is to serve. I already serve my coven and my tradition, but this was an opportunity to serve the greater community where I live.
All that being said, as a community I don't think we deal with death as often as some other religious communities do, and we certainly don't have the same amount of tradition behind us for guidance, at least not in Wicca and other Neo- Pagan religions.
For instance, when the member of a Catholic church dies, he or she has a large religious community and a highly trained professional member of the clergy to guide him or her on the way to the afterlife. For the dying person and the family there is about 1600 years of established church tradition to guide and comfort them. You will see many older people in a Catholic church. In fact, people in the latter half of life may make up the majority of those in attendance.
I can't speak for all Wiccan traditions, but in mine the vast majority of people with whom I'm familiar are between the ages of 20 and 50. Our "elder die-off" happened before my day, and our elders were not many. To my knowledge we have not lost an active member to death since I joined in 1999, though one member lost a child and one lost a life-partner, as well as various deaths of parents and grandparents and other relatives.
We haven't been directly confronted-yet.
But in 20 or 30 years, surely we will be so confronted. When it happens we will have to begin crafting our traditions regarding death in earnest. Undoubtedly other larger and somewhat older traditions are dealing with this.
However, my unscientific guess is that the average age of Wiccans in general hovers somewhere in the 30s because of the massive influx of young members that happened in the 1990's due to the explosion of the Internet.
Even if it's ten years older, people in their 40s usually have both parents still living, along with their own children, spouses, and their siblings, not to mention their friends and co-workers, who are probably close in age.
We see death in the news and in movies and video games, but it isn't close and personal. It isn't in our living room, and we can turn it off and it goes away.
As a community we don't have a large body of literature regarding death and dying. In fact, the only book I can think of is Starhawk's (et al) Pagan Book of Living and Dying and I don't know anyone who personally has a copy on his/her shelf.
It still surprised me when more than one person asked why I would want to volunteer in a hospital, especially around dying people and all of their issues. One person more-or-less questioned my sanity, and another couldn't see doing something for no money that wasn't "fun."
I clearly recall the first Pagan person who couldn't wrap his brain around the idea. He really did ask, "Why would you do that?"
After a moment of shocked silence I explained the above. He shrugged and said, "Well, I guess you've thought it through."
I wasn't freaked out by being confronted with death and a Pagan did not understand why I was not freaked out by death. I don't get it. I still simply don't understand.
This is not a matter of constant attendance at deaths of my family members. Almost anyone would be losing his or her mind over that. The death of your immediate family members holds more significance in many more ways.
While I love these people I help, each and every one of them, I do not love them the same way I love my children or my husband or my other close relatives. What I fear in losing family is not actually death, it's my natural, selfish need to have them near me and available when I want them, amongst other things.
I can think of ways in which I would fear to die, but I have no fear of death itself. My experience with Pagans in general has shown that for most of us this is the case, regardless of what our particular beliefs are about what happens afterward. My experience with these few people has shown again that there are always exceptions to any rule.
I can think back to a time where I was afraid of death. I don't mean 'ookie' dead things like road kill; I mean I was afraid of Death.
Having been raised with the fundamentalist Christian belief in a literal Hell with literal eternal flames and more, I was desperately afraid that my salvation didn't "take" at the age of seven, that Jesus did not love me, and that God would send me to Hell forever.
As I grew out of that, I grew out of my fear.
For some I'm sure there's still a lingering fear about eternal divine retribution... even amongst Pagans. They may not want to admit it, but it's there and it festers in the mind.
For others, I believe it's an inability to get comfortable with the concept of not knowing for SURE what's coming after. Some non-Abrahamic religious traditions have a proscribed set of beliefs about the afterlife, and some don't. But with the very few I'm familiar with, an afterlife isn't a certainty the way the "people of the book" have certainty.
For those of you who are afraid of death I ask that you take some time to truly examine this fear and find out why you are afraid. Meditate, write in your journal, whatever method suits you, and take a deep look inside.
It's true that most people will fear change to some extent and death is a really big change. Many people also fear the unknown. But if this leads you to truly be afraid of death and avoidant of confronting it, you really need to attempt to work it out.
