We are the gatherers. We will gather in your space, that moment in time when you need a team. Assembling at your side, your bedside, we come and go at your whim. Your last wish is often our command, ebb and flow to care for your ups and downs, Moving to find where you are, to find who you are, who you want to be in your Time.
We will gather every little thing you need, striving to find your favorites, little things that matter to body, mind, and spirit. Putting essentials within your reach, trappings and treatments, watching you push away our help in fear, as you struggle to hold old ways that no longer serve. Shut the door, try the window. Help has many faces, hope seeks you out. Comfort comes with tears, quiet cursing, and sweat.
We will gather your village, your people, those who care about and care for. Extensions of you, reflections of your past, often solitary. Your labor force to do the heavy lifting at midnight, to watch the door, the clock. Bringing tools for the work, unwelcome or unseen, we teach truth that falls on deaf ears and broken hearts, Truth that steals last hopes. Catching those who fall in battle for life and hope, standing in the gap in your circle, Believing no one goes on alone, hand unheld.
We are the gatherers. Gathering memories, reviewers of the life you’ve lived, holding your hurts, joys, and sins. Not flinching or blinking, knowing our review will be the same. We listen as you descend to the place we will also go. If you’re not telling us, we still know. We know why your heart holds secrets, the same way ours do. No judgment but unexpressed relief that your burden is not ours, all the while knowing it will be the same for each of us.
We are gatherers, drawing near to you, pulling your village in close holding them as they hold on to you, clinging to them. The best of you, the last of you. Pointing out what seems obvious and tangible, to watch breath and beat. Best guess on time, listening to your final messages, finding the end moment and watching them fall.
We will gather with them. Church, field, mosque, closed box, dust on wind, quiet rage, guilty relief. We don’t wear their grief rags, it’s not our place, But we have held their burdens close. We have our own stories to add. Part of the family, witness to the bare bones, seeing grit and anger and pure despair. Laughter with regret, the cleaning up and cleaning out that comes with closure that’s not real.
We are gatherers. We have gathered our own memories of each of you. We are called to comfort, to console. No healing, but hope. Last meal, last walk, last wish granted. Storing memories that we will carry, stories that flash over us in a solitary moment. Loving what we do, hating what we can’t change or console. We gather each of you to our hearts, hearts that are beaten, refined until they shine.
by Helen Bauer, RN CHPN Co-host of The Heart of Hospice June 23, 2019