Keeping Them Company at the End

Another especially sweet story of love and death. I think one of the reasons I loved hospice work was because of moments like these. They are precious moments because of their intimacy, purity and truth.

But now, when I think about that afternoon, I am in awe at the intimacy of what we experienced together. In its best moments, what we clergy do is live in our congregants’ lives, sometimes — too frequently — in their pain. Why they let us in has always been somewhat of a mystery to me. But when they do, as Harriet did that afternoon, we get a glimpse of holiness that is so luminous it is sometimes hard to go back into the world.

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