What Matters in the End? Accompaniment to Death

It is a great gift to be able to approach our own death or that of another from a place of conscious preparation, knowing one’s own gifts, hopes and fears and those of our caregivers. Through sharing each other’s experiences we will each deepen and grow our awareness.  We will explore our readiness to die,…

Workshop Description

It is a great gift to be able to approach our own death or that of another from a place of conscious preparation, knowing one’s own gifts, hopes and fears and those of our caregivers. Through sharing each other’s experiences we will each deepen and grow our awareness. 

We will explore our readiness to die, care-giving and receiving, difficulties that arise between the person dying and the one accompanying and the topic of a chosen death.

The focus will be on personal exploration considering both physical and cognitive decline and the emotional and spiritual issues that arise surrounding death, knowing that the needs and desires of each person are unique. We will guide the process through our own personal sharing, and posing questions to participants.

Participants will have opportunities to engage with these questions through writing or drawing and in verbal sharing both in small and larger groups.

• As you think about a significant death in your life, what felt right and what felt wrong about it?
• What do you wish you had known or done?
• What did a care-giving relationship teach you about your gifts and limitations?
• What would help you feel more prepared, spiritually or emotionally to die?
• What do you hope would be reflected through your window as a caregiver?
• What gifts might flow out through the door of your soul as offerings in accompaniment to death?
• What dilemmas, such as: different stages of hope between you and the one caring for you, denial of death on the part of the one dying or the loved ones or traditional medicine versus alternative methods of healing do you anticipate might be most problematic for you?
• Where have you experienced or witnessed racism in a care-giving relationship for yourself, a loved one or in a healthcare setting?
• Have you witnessed or experienced homophobia, transphobia, ableism, ageism or another ism in the context of care-giving?
• Many of our lives are touched by the challenges of dementia in a family member or friend.
• What are the additional spiritual challenges of the care-giving relationship when cognitive decline is a part of the picture and we begin to recognize our own unconscious blind spots in relating compassionately?

We’ll explore beliefs about after death. Is a chosen death something you feel strongly about, on one side or the other? We will open our days with worship and reflections on the previous day’s exploration. We will use poetry, prose and personal story to help us in our exploration. We will offer participants a resource list of books and music we have found helpful in exploring accompaniment to death. This workshop is aimed at people, who, perhaps by reason of age or an experience of a significant death in their lives, have begun to think about death in a conscious way. We expect that participants will emerge with both questions and answers to topics they have thought about and those that have not yet occurred to them.

This workshop will not address funerals, memorials, green burials, wills, trusts,power of attorney for medical decisions, donating body to research or organs for transplant, or the physical changes the body goes through when death is close. There is no workshop fee for materials. Please bring a notebook or journal each day to use in writing exercises.

Leader Experience

We have presented a workshop similar to what is proposed here first at Friends House, a Quaker retirement center in California in 2015, and subsequently at Ben Lomond Quaker Center in 2017 and later to an online group.

Mico: I have felt the experience of being well-used each time we have presented this workshop. It has been a joy to work with Dinah, both in the planning of and the facilitation of these workshops. The feedback offered from participants both times has made it clear that the leading is rightly ordered. I have also led interactive workshops with Dinah pertaining to racism to Friends groups and to psychotherapists.

Dinah: I have loved collaborating in creating these workshops and in facilitating with my beloved partner Mico. We complement each other well in our love of poetry, sharing personally and engaging deeply with participants as they explore with us these intimate end-of-life experiences. My experience as an individual and couples therapist and Mico’s experience clerking in the Quaker community inform this spiritual leading for both of us.