A denial too far

The following situations all occurred in my last couple of weeks of working in the Trust. What makes these situations all the more poignant is that they happened over the Christmas period.

A young woman was referred to me from the Macmillan team. She had terminal cancer and was not fully accepting her diagnosis. She had told the palliative care team she was finding it hard to pray which is why they asked me to see her.

When I saw her she looked really frail and it was obvious she wasn’t going to live much longer. She told me that she had run out of words to say to God. I said that was ok, that the bible says that the spirit intercedes for us with sigh’s too deep for words. She seemed to take some comfort from this. I also read her Psalm 139 which says that God knows our words even before we say them. These conversations happened over a few days as it was only possible to have snippets of conversation before she was exhausted.

The one thing she was consistent about was her wish to go home. She was going back to her parents house as she wasn’t fit enough for her own home. One day she told me that she wasn’t going to be able to go back to work. I thought this was a breakthrough and began to open up the conversation about how she would prepare for her death. We seemed to be going in the same direction and then out of the blue she told me she was looking forward to her dad taking her out in the car for drives until she got better.

I knew I couldn’t lead her down a road that she wasn’t willing to travel. I also know that some people die in denial. All I could do was walk with her wherever she took me. I would often take her poems and readings and read them to her. She would always say thank you and appreciated me coming but we never went further than that.

She got home and died two days later.

These situations can lead to the professionals involved feeling dissatisfied. I think we all did a good enough job. It would have been wrong to push her when she wasn’t ready to face her imminent death. I think God would have helped her and did help her through that last process and that is something we can’t know about till our turn comes.