Safe Enough to Die

Each morning the staff from my hospice company meets to review the previous day and make ready for the coming one. That’s when I learned that Diana had died during the night.

Our nurses in the Zoom call that morning expressed surprise that Diana had died so quickly. “What happened? What were the factors?” they wondered. “That was so fast,” they kept saying. Finally Josie, one our lead nurses, said, “Maybe we just got her comfortable.” 

I called Josie after the meeting and asked her what she had meant by that.

Josie explained: “Sometimes when people are stressed or anxious, they can’t die well. If they are suffering a high degree of pain, or if everything around them is conflicted or unsettled, they can’t ‘let loose.’ In Diana’s case, up until a couple of months ago, she was legally under the care of her daughter. But her daughter had abandoned her. They found Diana in a hotel room down in Atlanta. Her estranged brother got the call, drove down, and took this skeletal woman up here in the backseat of his car. He called us. We helped get her into a facility. Now, she had a clean bed. We tended to her body and treated her wounds. She knew she was cared for. She also knew that her brother, whom she had not seen in thirty years, was OK. I think she knew that it was safe enough to die.”

Thinking of Diana’s story, I marvel all over again at human suffering. For all the faith I have lost, I still believe in “The Fall.” Yes. Our fallen condition and its resulting misery. I realize this is a low bar for “faith.” 

Hoping for more than that low level of belief from me, loved ones and friends in my life ask me about the state of my soul since I began publicly proclaiming my abandonment of faith. They press me, hoping to detect some small sign I am still saved. They are disappointed by my answers. It’s difficult to satisfactorily articulate uncertainty, mystery, and wonder. Difficult also to rightly express my disaffection with the church without being insulting.

Josie, though, put words on something I previously could not describe: Yes, I have lost my faith in some theological teachings about Jesus. More accurately, though, I have found a different locus point for him.

The core questions of my soul no longer have to do with the moralistic inventions of today’s “Christianity.” I am in a state of disregard, also, for the doctrinal pontifications about him with the accompanying documents requiring signatures. My tongue spits out any bread or juice coated with finely measured grains of theological spice.

Now, instead, the essence of my search, the core internal question for any group claiming the almighty truth of Jesus is this: Is it safe to be with you? Can an anxious and miserable person, tip-toeing into your midst, feel their troubled soul let loose, and hear their soul say, “I am home. I am loved. I am safe, just as I am?”

• I think of pregnant women, and about gay and trans persons, who now feel hunted and surveilled by the church in its newfound Trumpian power.
• I think of persons of color who feel threatened by the Eighty Percent Church that voted for Donald Trump, thereby endorsing his violence, and his blatant, vicious racism.
• I think of migrant workers, who have witnessed their churchgoing overlords on our nation’s farms support a man who scapegoats and threatens them.

There is nothing safe about a religion like that.

I am now also keenly aware of an unseen host of committed former churchgoers who cannot and will not be a part of that kind of faith construction any longer.

Diana, miserable, needed someplace safe enough to die. The rest of us, for now, need a place safe enough to rest, just enough manna to make it to tomorrow. Just a few morsels of authentic understanding, compassion, and mercy. Safe enough to live, and rise, and face another day.

Souls like mine will seek such places or choose to be adrift until we find them. Or we will create such spaces, even just on our own, one-on-one, with other people. 

This, until we make it home.