Part of us

There are some of us that like to spend time with the dying. We have a need, a desire and a passion to be allowed to spend time with people as they face the last months, weeks, days and hours before entering the great unknown. I have often wondered why this is. I have often joked that there is a psychopathology that governs us all. At times I wonder if it is just a morbid fascination with pain that brings us here. Or a deep denial of the ugly things in the world that makes us want to make dying easier.
I do not think that there is one single, neatly packaged reason for individuals venturing into terminal care. Some of us have an idea about 'giving back', others want to feel good about their charity, many feel that, in a world where a caring profession has become nothing but a political game, the closest you can get to being allowed to care at all is in a palliative setting and a few do it because they lost loved ones to terminal illnesses and want to fix the mistakes they felt. No, there are probably as many reasons as there are people working in this field.
But once you are there, you know why you stay. The addictive powers of these people are immense. I can never get enough of how they become part of me. I do not invite them in, yet they sit in my heart and enrich my life. They become a part of me and I can access their contributions to me years and years after the last time I held their hands. There is the dying woman who wanted to spare her children the indignity of her last days and allowed only me to convince her of their need to be with her. There is the dying child who tells his mother that he'll wait for her - even though we cry we feel our faith renewed. There is the dying mother who calls her sons and lovingly tells them that she will die now and does so by simply closing her eyes. There are so many more...

But these stories are for another time. For now, just this - we stay in terminal care because we become addicted to the patients. And when we leave the longing is intense, like that of a drug addict thinking ever only of the next fix and how to get it. Because what these pwople give is so much more than they receive.