A friend of mine who reads my blog (PL, you know who you are!) asked me to write a new post because things were slow at work and she needed something to read. I asked her what I should write about. “Oh, death and dying,” was her casual reply. Yeah, ’cause that’s a really easy topic!! I asked for a subtopic under the category of death and dying, and she said, “saying goodbye.”

Will do–let’s talk about saying goodbye. My friend is getting ready to say goodbye to a relative of hers who is not likely to live much longer. Like so many families, there’s a lot of pressure for people to gather, keep vigil, and say whatever it is they need to say to the dying person. But what do you say? How do you say goodbye?

I think you should express everything you need to say to the dying person. Get it all out. Take your time, and be sure you fully express your whole collection of thoughts, feelings, and hopes for the person. And if it’s absolutely necessary, if you really can’t avoid it, use words.

That’s right: you don’t have to literally say anything. My siblings and I were all gathered around my mother’s bedside when she died nearly 11 years ago. Some of us would run errands, or talk to my dad, or go back to Mother’s side…we fell into a rough rotation pattern. I remember doing a few of the night “watches.” All we did was hold her hand, hold her hand, hold her hand. We might doze a bit from time to time, or talk to each other, or just watch her, listen to her breathing, try to see if there had been any changes. But the main thing was holding her hand. She was on a pretty good dose of morphine at the end, so she wasn’t able to sit up and talk to us very much. We just maintained a physical connection.

I remember at one point my mother asked me, “Do you have anything else you need to say to me?” At that particular moment, I didn’t. (Boy, do I have a lot to tell her now!) But she asked me that question before the vigils began, before she really started to decline and go into what they call “active dying.”

Later that week, when we were staying up all night to be with her, I think I said everything that needed to be said–I said it in the action of keeping vigil. I don’t think I understood this at the time, but in retrospect I think the act of keeping vigil communicates a lot to the dying person. Your silent presence communicates far more than any speech or carefully rehearsed statement. And I think it communicates one thing above all–one thing that many people who are dying need to hear–it communicates that those who are keeping vigil with you, who will witness your death, are strong enough to carry on after you’re gone. It takes a lot to keep vigil with a dying person, particularly if she is highly important to you. To do it, you have to summon strength and resilience from within. And I think that the dying person can sense that. She can tell that you are standing up at a difficult time. She can sense your resilience. And that might be all she needs to let go.

Don’t worry about what to say. Just be present in whatever way you can. That says a lot!

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This entry was posted on Monday, May 5th, 2008 at 12:53 pm and is filed under Grief. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.