Graceful Exit: preparing for a good death
Isn’t good death an oxymoron like sweet sorrow? How could Andrew Holecek
teach a workshop called Graceful Exit: Preparing for a Good Death? What is it that we are preparing for?
The Good Death, February 1997, is the name of a beautifully written book by Marilyn Webb. She encouraged people and society to use drugs to take away the dreaded pain of dying, the actual “real” physical pain, or the pain from knowing impermanence when it’s too late to do much about it.
Dying people, as well as their care-givers, were caught in a bind: the fear of suffering from the discomfort of dying was often not as great as fear of drugs and addiction and of losing control. Those were the years of the drug wars when a doctor could be prosecuted for giving too much medicine, or for withholding it and letting a patient suffer because of her own moral beliefs and fears about drugs. Our society was and is afraid to let someone go.
Medical technology has evolved and thrives in a society afraid of death. So far our ethics have not evolved sufficiently to guarantee that a person not wanting to be kept alive artificially, or with drugs, would be able to let go and die. Today, with all of our technology, the question is not what is good, but rather when is a person really dying. There seems to be always another treatment that could give a few more days of life. How can we have a good death?
What is a good death? Are there ways we can prepare? What can we do for ourselves as we die; what can we do for others? What about suicide, sudden death, euthanasia? And how can we help after death? Especially if the death itself was not so “good.” Andrew Holecek illuminates the period between death and the next life, or whatever situation arises for you in the next moment. His book and workshop will actually help you know what to do.
In his book, Preparing to Die, Holecek, a western student of Buddhism, a dentist by trade, has made deep spiritual understandings available as expressed through the details of caring for the dying. Teachings from great masters, as well as of western caregivers, show how the ordinary details of care can bring comfort and ease to the “state of mind” of the dying person.
When the spirit is nurtured by attention to the details in the person’s world, courage and peace will arise. Proper attention to pain, anxiety, nutrition, and hydration, as well as attention to wills and other practical matters all contribute to the dying person’s state of mind.
The settled mind is important for dying and for the period between death and life: in the Tibetan tradition called bardo. People of different traditions, or no tradition at all need comfort and ease at the end of life. People of all ways of thinking could be joined at the heart through the act of caring at the end of life.
From this viewpoint the state of mind of helper and helped are not separate. Whether your goal is another life, enlightenment, heaven or an eternal grave, we learn that letting go and loving are the same.
— Ann Cason
