The Sacrament of Letting Go

I was swinging in the park yesterday during my run yesterday. It's true, I went running. And it probably won't happen again for at least a week or two as my quads hurt super bad. That's what I get for working out once every couple months... Anyway, I was looking at this huge mama tree as I was swinging and singing with my ipod and watched a leaf fall to the ground. At first, I just watched it sway back and forth with the wind and the pretty spiral of orange that was the leaf's journey. Then I looked back up at the tree to see the other leaves and they were all gone. I watched this last leaf fall. It was a cool moment to reflect on the loss of that last leaf and the end of a season. Winter is here.

This poem is amazing, by the way...

The Sacrament of Letting Go
by Macrina Wiedekehr

Slowly she celebrated the sacrament of letting go.
First she surrendered her green,
Then the orange, yellow, and red.
Finally she let go of her own brown,
Shedding her last leaf-

She stood empty and silent, stripped bare.
Leaning against the winter sky,
She began her vigil of trust.
Shedding her last leaf,
she watched it journey to the ground.

She stood in silence wearing the colors of emptiness,
her branches wondering, "How do you give shade with so much gone?"

And then the sacrament of waiting began.
The sunrise and the sunset watched with tenderness,
Clothing her with silhouettes that kept her hope alive.
They helped her to understand that her vulnerability,
Her dependence and need,
Her emptiness, her readiness to receive,
Were giving her a new kind of Beauty.

Every morning and every evening,
They stood in silence,
And celebrated together the sacrament of Waiting.

a good goodbye

I’ve been watching these videos about end of life and palliative care as part of my orientation at Hospice and it wipes me out emotionally just to watch the videos. I haven’t even gotten to interact with patients and families yet and I’m drained. The whole world of hospice and palliative care is the heart-wrenching work of helping people have a good death and helping their families process their grief afterward. It’s watching a person go through the process of saying goodbye to someone who has been their world for so many years, a mother, father, child, sibling or spouse. When I think about it that way, I wonder why I am drawn to this work. As someone who dreads goodbyes, I’ll be in the midst of the hardest goodbyes someone people will ever know.

I feel privileged to enter into that intimate time with families, to help people have a good goodbye. To be a part of their world as they find meaning in the life they lived and the lives they touched. The end of one’s life is a sacred time of making sense of it all. I think it’s really important to have that time with family, to say the things you need to say, to tell your family you love them, to be in as little pain as possible as you leave this earth, to reach a point of being ready to let go, knowing it’s time. To not feel as though your loved one was torn from your fingers, but that each finger was gently unfurled until a point when you are able to let go.

One of the videos follows a couple through the whole process of terminal illness and the end of life process. They followed them through the nightmares of the medical system and treatments, through the pain and prescriptions, through the long and drawn out process of death and most beautifully through the devotion to one another in the midst of a heartbreaking goodbye. The wife was by her husband’s side through it all. She did everything in her power to help. She made him hearty home-cooked meals to try and keep him from losing weight so fast. She cried because nothing she could do would make him well. He explained to her that it may not make him well, but it made him better. He was better for her love. I’m a softy when it comes to love stories and you better believe that I was sobbing by the end of this video as she recounted their last moments together at home. They were lying side by side in bed, early in the morning. His breath became irregular which is a signal that death is close. She thanked him over and over for choosing to spend his life with her. In his last breaths, he muttered, “love you, love you, love you.” Rip my heart out why don’t you. Seeing this kills me, in the best way possible. I am just in awe when I am in the presence of that kind of love.

Seasons of Change

This past year and past few weeks have been a time of change and transition for myself and so many of my friends. I am reminded over and over that nothing stays the same. We grow up. We move out of our parent’s homes. We move closer to friends. We move away from friends. We are working our way through life meeting the new and leaving the old behind. We are in a continual process of being and becoming. Rollo May said, “In human beings courage is necessary to make being and becoming possible.” We need to be courageous in the process of letting go and handing ourselves over to change and becoming who we are meant to be.

The phrase, “letting go” has been a loaded phrase for me ever since I was a little girl. I never wanted to “let go”. I never wanted things to change.

-I refused to believe my dog would never return after we hadn’t seen him in days. I wasn’t ready to let go.

-Year after year, my mom would make every attempt to get me to throw away my old toys and sentimental keepings. Every year I would plead to keep them, holding on to stuffed animals, birthday cards, and love letters. I wasn’t ready to let go.

-When I left for college, I clung to my friends at home, desperate for the familiar. I would go home any chance I could to be with them.

-After each of my summers in Malawi, I dreaded saying goodbye. The second I set foot on African soil, I was already clinging to hellos and sighing at the thought of goodbye.

-In moving into my studio, I had to get rid of things because it wouldn’t all fit in such a small space. I struggled in choosing what to keep and what to let go. There is security in stuff.

-In my own spiritual and emotional world, I have a plethora of things to let go of. I’ve packed them up and sit upon them, wondering when I will be ready to let them go.

In any season of change, there is letting go, a process of becoming. I find myself holding onto ‘how it was’ because it provides a sense of comfort. There is nothing comfortable about change and growing. It hurts to grow and it’s easier to cling to what you know than to reach out in faith for what could be. There is safety in what we know and fear in what we do not. There is a fear of letting go. As I experience change and transition alongside so many friends and strangers, I am praying that we’ll be able to let go of our fears and embrace this time of growing and becoming. That with each step of faith we would grow in courage. And even in our moments of feeling alone, that we would know deep within our bones that we are never alone. We are kept in the hands of one who will never let us go.