End-of-Life Care As a Spiritual Practice

Laura Stephens with a wholly holy reflection 🏔🍄🦔

Welcome back to our two-month series of guest posts on contemporary spiritual practices. Today’s post is from my dear friend Laura Stephens, whom I initially connected with in her work as a designer—she is responsible for my Omnivore of the Human Experience logo, along with more family cards, custom gifts, and baby/wedding shower invitations than I can count. After a few years of being social media friends, we had the mutual instinct to get to know each other better and pretty quickly fell platonically in love. Laura says that she & I are made of the same “soul goo,” and after you read this post, you’ll understand why I take that to be a compliment of the highest measure. xoxo, Nishta

My religious background is that I was born and raised in the stiff, strict, patriarchal, legalistic, typical Southern US evangelical kind. Through some big life experiences (working a 12-step program, so much self-work/discovery/acceptance, international living and world travel, loving and doing life with a diverse, messy, beautiful, real, loving, creative, group of magical weirdos) my religiosity has now become a thing of very personal and also very universal love, light, goodness, and peace. It doesn’t have much more definition than that. Sometimes I call her/them God, Goddess, the Divine, my higher power, the god of my understanding. It doesn’t fit inside the walls of a church building, although the woods are my church. Sometimes the god of my understanding is a blue whale, a mushroom, a dog, a bird, a croissant, a painting, a song, a meal, a butterfly, a poem, a person. My closest description of the divine and my favorite personification is the poem by Edward J. Meeman called “God is like a Mountain.” (poem copied below)

{Disclaimer: Nishta knows me very well and knows that I can turn over a rock and find the Divine. I even call those little dust specks that float in a sunbeam, fairies. So the fact that I find my work spiritual is very low-hanging fruit. But here goes… I LOVE YOU NISHTA!}

My work background is that I have been a nurse since graduating from college in 2008, but doing anything but that since 2010. I worked my first 2 years out of college at the local children’s hospital on the post-surgery floor. It took me about 5 minutes to get burnt-out, bored, overwhelmed and jaded by the medical system. I’ve since worked as a day-school aid, an artist and illustrator, and a stay at home mom, while always maintaining my nursing license. I was most recently working as a home organizer when one of my clients was diagnosed with a terminal illness. In our chats she had learned that I had worked as a nurse in the past and maintained my license. She trusted me from the time we’d spent together organizing her home, so when she got sick she asked me to care for her through the end of her life. I took a day to think about it and ultimately decided I did want to do it. I DID feel confident in my nursing capacity, caregiving, and general handiness and helpfulness. I DIDN’T know how to help someone die well and at home, but I trusted that if she and I took it one day at a time we would get there. And we did.

This shelf in Laura’s home displays glass pieces she was gifted from her first patient’s extensive & treasured collection.

I started listening to podcasts on death and dying and listening to death doulas speak on what is important about caring for the dying, and I did those things. And I think I did them well. I think it came naturally for me. (That’s saying a lot because I don’t think I do anything well usually.) Meanwhile, our days that started with running errands, tidying house, straightening her hair, walks and lunch dates with her friends turned into feeding tubes and pressure ulcers and shower wheelchairs. I cared for her as well as I knew how until it was time for hospice to come truly help her die at home. Which she did.

Those months profoundly changed me. She taught me so much. I learned so much about myself and other people that I couldn’t have learned any other way. I struggled with her death in a lot of weird ways that I could’ve never expected. (Thank goddess for my amazing therapist!) Maybe the most shocking thing I learned through that was…I want to care for people as they die. She gave me the gift of asking me to do this for her, so that I could learn that I want to do this for as many people who will ask me, for as long as I can. And I want to treat them like I would my own mother. No, I want to treat them exactly as they want to be treated as they die. Which is an honor and a calling I didn’t even know existed 6 months ago. 

So now I refer to myself as a death and dying nurse. I care for the dying in their homes in any way they can think of: groceries, meals, hygiene, wound care, laundry, transportation, paperwork, communication, pain management, gardening, medication, support with family members, education, nutrition, pet care, name it. As they transition, I prepare them and their family for the end and what to expect as it gets closer, in all the ways I can think of; if i’m lucky enough, I get to be with them as they depart this dimension, and even clean and care for their bodies after they go. This is “brutiful” work (Glennon Doyle’s word for squishing together the most beautiful and brutal experiences of life). It is mundane, exhausting, sacred, smelly, funny, heartbreaking, frustrating, life-giving, predictable and unexpected at the same time. A joy. I know it’s exactly what I am supposed to be doing.

Somehow I can give every physical drop of energy you would think I had to a day of work with one of my patients, and I can come home and be able to show up for my kids in so many ways I didn’t know possible. Because this work fills me. It moves me. It animates my spirit at a subconscious level. It even feels selfish in ways, because I feel that I get more from this experience than the patients and families do. It’s true SPIRIT work. It’s something so much bigger than me, and I know that. It’s why I feel so lucky that it found me. It feels so primal, cellular, right. I feel connected to the earth and the dirt and the stars and every plant and animal and human that has shared the oxygen of this planet. It makes so much sense and no sense at all. Other than my marriage and motherhood, it’s the greatest honor I’ve had. It’s the realest thing I’ve ever known. 

Laura napping with her Sandy boy

Laura Stephens is a private-duty nurse with a passion for death and dying care. She dabbles in illustration, organization, and mom things like class parties and set creation for her children’s theater productions. Her dream is to create and serve in a hospice house (think B&B for dying) to help bring the most comfort, attention, and care to death and dying. Outside of work, Laura enjoys spending time in nature, birding, and camping with her friends and family. She lives in Memphis, Tennessee with her husband Ryan, her children Florence and Judah, her pup Luna, and her kitty Sandy.

God is Like A Mountain
	
	“Why are there so many religions?” asks the skeptic. “They can’t all be true so I don’t think any of them are true.” To the skeptic I answer:
	God is like a great mountain. There are many roads to the mountain, from many directions… many vantage points from which it can be seen. 
	Some see it from the far end of the valley, some from the very foot, some from the adjoining peaks of high philosophy, some as they till the busy lowlands of service, some from the picnic grounds of joy in living…
	Some climb the mountain and learn the form and nature of every herb and bush and tree that graces its surface…
	The breath of every wind, the flavor of every berry, fruit and nut, the song of every bird.
	Some cling to the lower slopes, some come in organized groups, captained by trustworthy and confident leaders. A few make the journey all alone, one by one… and some of these, too, find the glory. 
	The approaches and the viewpoints are different, the knowledge of the mountain varies in intimacy, fullness, depth and height. 
	The different approaches are our different religions, the different viewpoints are our different theologies. Who shall say that only one road leads to the mountain? That only one view of it is true?
	The mountain is always the same, always there, belonging to all of us in common. However we come to it and however it may look to us. Limitless in beauty, variety and richness, for us to worship and enjoy. 
	We look through our different foregrounds to the same mountain, to the same reality. 
	Love our mountain, love all who have found it, love all who seek it, by whatever road, love even those who have not heard its call to them to come to it. 

                 -Edward J. Meeman

Previously in this series:

Research as a Spiritual Practice by Rebecca Clarren

Still to come in this series:

Week of March 25: Katie Vhay—Acts of Service as a Spiritual Practice

Week of April 1: Burke Butler—Sewing as a Spiritual Practice

Week of April 8: Shelly Taylor—Horseback Riding as a Spiritual Practice

Week of April 15: Amber Ambrose—Dreaming as a Spiritual Practice

Week of April 22: Preetha Narayanan—Music as a Spiritual Practice

Week of April 28: Vanessa Nickerson—Gardening as a Spiritual Practice