Death in the time of the coronavirus

Death is a part of life.  Yes.  But, what worries us now is the additional deaths--the ones that have been suddenly caused by the coronavirus.  It is overwhelming, literally and emotionally.

Hospital chaplains are also overwhelmed.  This essay in The New Yorker that is centered on a young chaplain in New York's Mt. Sinai Hospital is poignant.

[Kaytlin] Butler, twenty-six, is one of eight chaplains on Mount Sinai’s Spiritual Care team. The team, which also has four residents, includes two rabbis, a Jewish woman who is not ordained, a Seventh-day Adventist, a woman who is inspired by Buddhism, and an evangelical Christian. (The hospital is also served by two Catholic priests, who are sent by the New York archdiocese.)      

What if a patient is Muslim? Or not religious?  "when families request prayers for loved ones, she honors their traditions. For Muslims, she says the Shahada."

It is a tough job--both in terms of what they have to do, and the context in which they do it.  COVID-19 has made it even tougher for chaplains because invariably the coronavirus patients die alone when they are hooked up to ventilators and more in the ICUs.  It is such a lonely event that even the chaplain cannot be at the patient's bedside calming and reassuring them.  This virus is diabolical.

I have blogged about death as the loneliest event, though that "lonely" was about the end being a solo act.  The following is an edited version of that post from September 2017.
*******************

I am pretty much convinced that it is the acute realization that I might be dead at any second that drives most of my decision-making.

It is good to know that I am not alone in thinking like this.  Today, I came to know that there is something called existential psychotherapy, and that there is an existential psychotherapist writer named Irvin Yalom.

Yalom is practically my father's age.  He "helped introduce to American psychological circles the idea that a person’s conflicts can result from unresolvable dilemmas of human existence, among them the dread of dying."

Hey, that's what I have been saying and writing, based on my intuitive understanding.

Another of Yalom’s signature ideas, expressed in books such as Staring at the Sun and Creatures of a Day, is that we can lessen our fear of dying by living a regret-free life, meditating on our effect on subsequent generations, and confiding in loved ones about our death anxiety. When I asked whether his lifelong preoccupation with death eases the prospect that he might pass away soon, he replied, “I think it probably makes things easier.”

Exactly!  Regret-free life. Effect on future generations. Talking about death and the anxiety.  To me, this is a healthy formula for a wonderful life.

“If we live a life full of regret, full of things we haven’t done, if we’ve lived an unfulfilled life,” he says, “when death comes along, it’s a lot worse. I think it’s true for all of us.”

Yep, the religions and cultural traditions do not matter one bit.  It always comes down to living fulfilled lives.

When two of his close friends died recently, he realized that his cherished memory of their friendship is all that remains. “It dawned on me that that reality doesn’t exist anymore,” he said sadly. “When I die, it will be gone.”

Friends die.  Sometimes suddenly. Relatives die. Every death tears the fabric of our own lives.  We worry that we did not spend time with them when they were alive.

But, memories remain. And memories are all that we can take with us.

“Dying,” he wrote in Staring at the Sun, “is lonely, the loneliest event of life.” Yet empathy and connectedness can go a long way toward reducing our anxieties about mortality.

Empathy is perhaps the emotion that is most important to me, especially in the way it helps me understand my own existence and, thereby, my death.

For all the morbidity of existential psychotherapy, it is deeply life-affirming. Change is always possible. Intimacy can be freeing. Existence is precious. “I hate the idea of leaving this world, this wonderful life,” Yalom said.

Yes, when the day comes, I will hate leaving behind this wonderful life.  But, as my father said, "even the great souls could not stop death.  They too are gone."  Such is life on this pale blue dot.