The Color of Agony

“My wails of sorrow

are tormenting my soul” 

(Jalaluddin Rumi, The Love Poems of Rumi)

The grief work I have been privileged to engage over the years has allowed me to bear witness to a rather remarkable aspect of human brilliance. I stand in awe of our ability to bear the pain of agony; in particular, the heart-wrenching pain of sitting vigil at the bedside of a loved-one as they die. Agony is defined as, "intense physical or mental suffering."

All of you who have had a child, sibling, spouse, parent or friend in end-of-life care understand this agony of the mind (and perhaps more accurately, of the soul). Day after day you sit with a loved-one who is nearing the end of life's journey.  You watch their slow, sometimes very painful decline, unable to take away their suffering, but very much bearing it with them. 

“Agony is not something that happens to you.

To agonize is a choice.” 

(Alan Cohen)

This agony is compounded by conflicting desires - we want the person to continue to live, at the very same time that we want their suffering to come to an end. We don't want to have to say goodbye, and yet we are so bone-weary tired from our vigil that we long for it all to come to an end. It is true agony. 

Even so, mothers and fathers, spouses and friends all around the world are today extending compassion (meaning to suffer with) to someone they love. Perhaps Alan Cohen is correct in his assertion that agony is a choice. We do not have to sit, hour after long hour in the hospital or hospice room. We could leave the care of our loved-ones to the nursing staff. Instead, however, we choose to allow mind, body, heart and soul to be infused with the aroma of life's sometimes violent blossoming into eternity. We choose to become immersed in the tears, moans of pain, and heart-wrenching cries for mercy that leaving this world may illicit. 

This is not to say that all deaths are filled with pain, all passings expressions of nature's seeming violence. Some are quiet and peaceful. Some lives ease out of this corporeal experiment as softly as a summer sunrise. This death, though, this bed-side agony-of-the-soul-passing - this one is filled with hurt.

What then becomes of us who sit vigil? When the last breath rattles from the lungs, eyes finally closing in rest, who are we? We are the ones who are forever changed. Something has been taken from us in our experience of agony - we are emptied in ways that only time will give answer to. Concurrently, though, we are filled, we have become more, for we have survived the crucible. 

“Should you shield the canyons from the windstorms

you would never see the true beauty

of their carvings.”
(Elisabeth Kübler-Ross)

The hospital/hospice room is emptied of personal effects; back at home family and friends bring food, kindness, comfort. As evening seeps in you close your eyes in exhaustion... and relief. It is finished. Grief settles upon you, searing and familiar, and your heart, empty and raw, full and overflowing, has been remade. 

What you do in sitting at the bedside of those in their final weeks and days of life is nothing short of miraculous. This vigil reveals you - it shows both the strength and the vulnerability of Love as it pours from your heart. 

Most recently I have been the recipient of the stories of two teenagers whose lives were ended from cancer. Mothers and fathers bore the agony of their children's last days; bore this agony and filled our world to overflowing with the kindness of their Love. Humanity is truly amazing for we are a gift of Light and Love that our world desperately needs. Be the Love that you are... 

I leave the last word to poet, Kahil Gibran:

“Out of suffering

have emerged the strongest souls;

the most massive characters

are seared with scars.” 

(Kahlil Gibran)

The color of agony...

the cost of Love.

To see

not the

pain

but only

the need

not the fear

but only

the

longing

This is

compassion

Weep

Laugh

Pray

To Ponder Further:

- From the Bible: "...we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame... (Romans 5:3-5 )

- From Confucianism: "Whosoever wishes to eliminate completely the sufferings of others through his own sufferings, that is the excellent person." (Book of History 5.9)

- From Islam: "The truly righteous are those who endure with fortitude misfortune, hardship and peril. That is, who are patient in poverty and affliction..."(Quran 2:178)