Rita Benor [now Ruth Benor Sewell]           

 Give sorrow words, the grief that does not speak whispers the o'er fraught heart and bids its break.
                                                    Macbeth

When first considering my task in writing this article I tried to draw together my thoughts, feelings and experiences of death, the process of dying and grief.  I talk of the 'healing unto death', and know it through my senses and through the experience of being with people as they make their final life transition - the final process of life - that is dying.  To draw on these senses and experiences in order to bring about a tangible and coherent story is no easy task.  To describe it in professional, clinical terms is relatively easy.  To reach into the spiritual, the essence of being, is harder to articulate.  The Pueblo Indians have an oral language rooted in metaphors.  They consider that once the language is written it dies.  Perhaps this explains why I have a clumsiness about describing innate experiences of my own.
  Though I have experienced many other transitions over many years, I still recall the uniqueness of each individual's transition.  I feel moved to a state of wonder when observing
  I have witnessed good deaths and bad deaths, predictable and surprising, unexpected ones.  With each I have a clear impression or image.  I seek to understand the things which occurred and influenced their process.  Assessing factors and features in good and bad deaths could be highly subjective, but it is important to begin to sort our such evaluations.  We must learn from our experiences and find ways to share them.  How else will we grow in our abilities to avoid unnecessary suffering and how else will we find ways to teach what we learn?  This is particularly so in a society which is moving increasingly towards death denial.
  It is suggested that a good death is one where the individual has had opportunities to be involved in the decisions surrounding physical care, where distressing symptoms and pain are controlled, where family or friends are involved and clear communication based on truth and respect of feelings and needs are responded to and cared for holistically.
  Holism is the term applied to our activities and considerations/approaches which relate to the physical, intellectual, emotional, social and spiritual dimensions and needs of all participants: the person who is ill, their family and friends, and the caregivers.  When considering healing, we clearly understand its pibotal relationship as healing means to make whole.  Healing can help the changes and adjustments in these dimensions and we have an opportunity through healing and holism to change attitude from seeking to limit the activities from just putting days into life, to putting life (quality) into the remaining days.  Once this philosophy is embraced and acted upon, healing can take place.
  Healing through a holistic framework in terminal illness, even more clearly than in other illnesses, is not about cure, but about a gentle, pervasive reaching into all the dimensions of the individual to help them arrive at a state of acceptance - not through passivity but through a gradual awakening awareness, touching those parts of themselves which are damaged, hurting, blocked or unexpressed, to reach develop a quality of wholeness within themselves and thereby initiating a process of self healing.
  Losing confidence - losing sight or sense of how to cope, feeling overwhelmed and vulnerable, are common experiences when one receives news of life threatening illness or approaching death.  It has been said that there is no dress rehearsal for dying and yet we are constantly experiencing losses throughout life.  It can be helpful to individuals to recall times in their life when serious things happen to reconnect them to how they coped.  In raising their awareness, fear and anxiety can be reduced and a sense of confidence and ability to cope can be encouraged.
  Let me share my experience of helping 'Jim', a 41 year-old businessman who was selfless in his devotion to duties at work and in his community.  He had been married for eight years to 'Jenny' and they had two sons of five and three.
  Jim had been hard-working, healthy and active until a debilitating chest infection led to investigations at the local hospital.  He was devastated to receive the news that he had an advanced cancer in his chest, with a life expectancy of 2-3 months.  Treatment could only be palliative and he was advised to see the Chaplain and to make contact with the local hospice.
  For many days he drifted in and out of shock, desperately seeking to understand what was happening.  He became determined to fight and totally rejected the suggestion that there was nothing more to do except await his fate.  He made contact with a locally based Macmillan nurse.  He felt that he had to make efforts to maintain his job and recover his health.  The nurse referred him to me for relaxation and supportive counselling.
  When I first met Jim he looked tired and grey.  His deep brown eyes appeared fearful.  He talked of his shock and bewilderment and fears of abandoning his family and particularly his two sons.  Jim had no experience of relaxation and was unaccustomed to talking about himself or even to recognising and asking for his own needs to be met.  He said he felt he was living on a time bomb with the seconds and minutes and days ticking ever closer to disaster and was not prepared to have this imposed prediction forced upon him.
  As the weeks unfolded into months, Jim became competent and committed to a daily time of relaxation, meditation and visualisation.  In visualisations, his love of gardening led to metaphors of seeds and germination in describing his own growing awareness.  He read books for inspiration as well as to broaden and support his new understandings and insights about his personal participation in influencing the course of his illness.  Despite unsupportive employers, he maintained (on a part-time basis) a strong, efficient commitment to a demanding job.
  During our sessions he gradually opened to his feelings.  He shared many experiences of having felt rejected and manipulated as a child and how this pattern had proved a template for his adult life.  Increasingly he became aware of the blocked areas in his emotional expression and was surprised to realise just how much anger had been stored inside due to childhood abuse by inconsistent parenting.
  Four months after his diagnosis he returned to the hospital for pulmonary function tests.  To the surprise of his doctor, his breathing capacity has increased.  Jim explained his beliefs that visualisation, self awareness and self healing were contributing to the improvements in his lungs.  The doctor was restrained and appeared almost unappreciative of Jim's progress.  Jim felt the doctor had difficulty in accepting that his medical prediction was proving inaccurate and that he could not explain away Jim's obvious improvements.  Jim was not critical or blaming towards the doctor's attitude, but rather aware of a shift in himself and difference in their perceptions of health and illness and of the 'dying' person taking control over his life.
  Jim spoke with me of his life and its meaning and how his attitude had changed from wanting to die to wanting to live.  His visualisations shifted from symbolisms of darkness which were overwhelming to colour and space and seeds of flowers showering out and around him from the centre of his body.
  Moving into the sixth month of self-healing, he looked well, his complexion was clear and healthy, he was a little breathless at times but eating well, and enjoying times with his children.  His wife was coping, but was not able to join him in his programme, to his chagrin, due to her disbeliefs in self-healing which were strongly rooted in religious and family teachings.
  As counselling peeled away layers of defences, Jim became aware of painful emotions towards his father.  His anger was almost uncontainable.  We talked of his need to release this and within a few days he became able to express feelings and hurts which had been locked in his body and mind for over thirty years.
  He became 'lighter' in his being.  His smiles were warmer and wider.  His fear had greatly diminished.  He appeared confident and happy.  Talking of his feelings and relief and lightness, he was optimistic and positive.  He was able to recognise the tension in his body and allowed himself to receive massage.  He also received laying-on of hands healing and found a deepening sense of peace and balance which he had never experienced before.  He spoke of a clear awareness of inner healing taking place.
  Over the following month he prepared for his imposed retirement and his son's birthday party.  He looked and spoke like a man who had put down a heavy load after a long journey.
  A few days before his son's party he developed an upper respiratory infection.  Within a few hours he was feeling very ill and breathless.  His condition deteriorated rapidly.  At first he was very anxious.  He was supported by nurses at home, received some tranquillising medication, and was able to attend the party.  However, it was clear that the load had been cast and he was drifting into the final release.  He enjoyed the party.  He was alert and happy to be with his wife and children.  As the party ended he was helped to bed, where he had asked to be placed.  Shortly afterwards he died - in peace, without pain, in the presence of his family.
  I believe Jim's journey was one of self healing - healing which was not about cure but a creation of a sense of wholeness and healing, a healing unto death.  Though I have given healing formally with a laying-on of hands, I felt it important that my relationship with Jim be focused upon his helping himself, and did not do this with him - lest he might allow himself to 'place himself in my hands' and avoid responsibility for helping himself.  I feel that healing happens when two people are together in a caring and accepting relationship, and that healing was taking place , quietly, by itself, in addition to the 'talking' therapies we did.  When Jim was in greater distress over feelings which were surfacing from his unconscious awareness I arranged for him to have laying-on of hands healing with another healer.
  Jim's childhood experiences had caused him to lock away and deny his feelings and thinking that others were to be considered before himself.  Prior to our work together he lacked the awareness and knowledge of how to articulate this.  His cancer brought him to a self awareness which enabled him to find that need and abilities - to focus on himself and to value that self commitment, to regain his sense of joy and openness.  The relaxation, counselling and healing helped him to gain access to dimensions of himself which had previously been beyond his awareness.
  Rereading this, I return my attention to my first paragraph.  I have described Jim's journey and his healing and yet there is still much unsaid and remaining to be described.  That is to do with the experience of my sharing in Jim's journey - of those times when emotions and awareness between us met at a level of empathy and moved far beyond to experiences which are impossible for me to articulate.  Our communication during these times did not require words but come from an inner knowing.  This inner knowing that I have gradually allowed myself to be comfortable with and increasingly to trust is of a spiritual dimension.  The spirit within me that is me somehow connects to the spiritual dimension in others.  It does not judge or need to label but simply exists.
  As a young nurse of twenty years ago I knew that this part of my awareness existed and yet my professional training had reduced the experience of dying and death to providing comfort.  This was tainted with elements of failure because I could not provide cures.  As I continue to work with people who are in the palliative phase of illness and also to teach professional nurses I hope that we may find the ways to ease, explain, explore and simply allow the natural processes of death transition to take place, for those who are dying but also for all those involved in the process.
 
Rita Benor is a Lecturer in Palliative Nursing, a Counsellor and Autogenic Training Therapist.  She also works privately with people who have cancer and are dying.
 

You may quote from or reproduce these editorial clips if you include the following credits and email contact:
Copyright © Daniel J. Benor, M.D. 1992 Reprinted with permission of the author P.O. Box 76 Bellmawr, NJ 08099
www.WholisticHealingResearch.com   DB@WholisticHealingResearch.com

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