Hospice – My Journey Into the Answers

Author: Jessica Hadari

I have been meaning to share the answers that came through me, when I first applied to take part in the Zen Hospice Project in SF. The application for the program was quite a journey. I treasure what it stirred up in me.

I chose to not include the “questions themselves” – each paragraph below, though is an individual answer to the in-depth and provocative questions that are on the Zen Hospice application. Enjoy!

• My son, upon his terminal diagnosis at birth was given a prognosis of only a few hours to live. We were told he would not survive the night. Though he did survive and is now almost 10, in the month that I spent with him in the NICU I had such strange and even wonderful experiences; celebrating his life, though it might end at any time. Rejoicing with other families as they took healthy children home and grieving with those who lost their babies. I cannot possibly know what it might have been like were I to have lost him. I do know acutely what it felt like to anticipate his death…and strangely enough to have had the felt experience of total acceptance in the wisdom of the universe, were he to die.

• Years ago, training in massage school, I read Medicine Hands by Gayle MacDonald, about giving massage to individuals with cancer. I was moved to tears, and felt a very strong urge to explore hospice volunteer work. Her take is that death is a force of nature that changes everyone it touches. She is also an advocate of of simply sitting and being with individuals undergoing palliative care…with no need to fix or change what is happening. Her writings resonated with my own experiences of both death and birth. I most see my role in hospice care as a good “sit-with-er” – just being in the presence of illness and death. I imagine there is also a lot of physical work involved? But I think my gift might be my work-horse durability and ability to be present for long periods of time.
  

• My uncle Michael has lived in a nursing home due to sever brain damage since before I was born. Growing up, my parents took me and my brother to visit him at least once each week. We also visited with the other residents; many had sever mental and physical limitations and altered appearances. My folks wanted us to feel accepting and comfortable with people who live and look differently, through illness and age. I cannot say that I am not still affected when I visit my uncle in the nursing home, but the environment feels familiar to me.

• I tend to take outright criticism personally. Solicited reflection and feedback works for me. But even when the criticism comes from an elderly individual, I may still feel hurt or charge.

• I think people should be as comfortable as they desire when nearing death. I understand that meditations, touch, visualizations and holistic therapies are immensely useful in pain management – and it is not my place to judge if or how a person chooses to be made comfortable.  I imagine that after a certain point, medical options for main management are very valuable.

• Western culture generally leaves little room or time for grieving. It feels quick and scheduled, medicated. Were it held in patience, in community, maybe parts of the grieving process never really end for those mourning the death of a loved one. If I were dying, I would grieve my own oncoming death. In reading Healing into Life and Death and some other books, it seems that forgiveness is a big part of the preparation for death and the grieving process. I have never lost someone I was close to, so I have never fully grieved a human life.

• As I mentioned in previous answers, I have just been specifically compelled toward hospice work through various life experiences. It also meets my desire for community and personal growth. As well, I have been present for births – there is something about the thresholds on either end of life that I am deeply moved by.

• The yearlong training appeals to my desire to dive in deep with and organization on a regular basis. The weekly shift arrangement totally works with my self-made schedule, and works well with my schedule as a parent – I have my son 50% of the time – and his father is also very flexible and supportive of my scheduling needs.

“Be patient with all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a foreign tongue… the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
-Rainer Maria Rilke

Jessica Hadari is the founder of the Miracle Salon and the FEM Talks Alliance of Women Leaders, Educators & Healers. 

Passionate about the "self-blossoming woman", for 15 years she has been privileged to lead countless women’s circles. Her greatest love? Watching women transform in the arenas of relationships, divine path and spiritual growth. 

Each month she produces the Miracle Salon, a celebrated woman's wisdom networking event, as well as Women's Wisdom & Prayer Circles.  Jessica immensely enjoys producing and collaborating around any women's event centered on emotional freedom.

She's a mother, writer, artist, hospice caregiver, master yoga teacher, holistic health practitioner, officiant, unconditional friend and voice of accountability in her Bay Area women’s communities.

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