As Death Gets Closer: The Last Days and Hours at Hospice

I'm honored to stand witness to those intimate, vulnerable moments.

Sometimes in my work as a certified nursing assistant at Zen Hospice Project’s Guest House, I am with a resident in the moment when he or she recognizes there is tangible evidence that they are getting closer to death. I watch people lose their ability to walk, to speak, to swallow, and to move at all as death gets closer. Most of us take these abilities for granted all our lives, and it can come as a very heavy blow to lose them. Witnessing these kinds of losses over and over again humbles me and awakens my gratitude for my own body’s current relative health, knowing that one day I too will lose control of my body functions one way or another.

The other night, I was assisting a resident at the Guest House at the moment when he became incontinent for the first time. I was supporting him while he stood unsteadily, when suddenly he urinated all over himself and the floor. He stood silent, too weak to do anything but hang on to the railing while I cleaned him up. He stayed silent when I dressed him in an incontinence brief, his eyes heavy-lidded and wet. In a soft voice, he thanked me as I helped him back into bed where he curled up in a ball and dropped into the murky fathoms of not-asleep/not-awake. After sixty-something years of being able to control his bladder, this man now had to wear adult diapers. I can only imagine what it’s like to lose such a basic human ability.

Learn more about how Zen Hospice Project is helping to change the experience of dying.

• 12 End-of-Life Signs and Symptoms
• Difference Between Palliative and Hospice Care
• What to Know About Near Death Experiences
• The Five Stages of Grief