Love and Fear: Stories from a Hospice Chaplain

by Renshin Bunce

We are safe because we are always a part of the large web of connection. You and I were connected before we met, and we are even more firmly connected now. This is the safety we yearn for. And connection is not limited to people. You’re connected to the wisteria vine on the fence, the mountains in the distance, the stars in the sky. We are not alone.”

“We’re afraid because we think that we’re separate and we have to keep our walls up, but there’s something else going on and I think you already know about that. That you’re a part of the universe and will never be separate from that no matter what happens to your body.” Her eyes were wide. “Really?” “Yes, and you can do that yourself. You can remember that you’re connected. “And there’s something else I’ve heard about working with the fear of death. I heard this in a talk from a great American Zen master. He said his wife was dying and that she was facing it with an attitude of curiosity, asking over and over, ‘What is this?’ If you’re engaging with curiosity, there’s no room for fear.”

Her house looked as if there had been a time when she cared what others thought.

One of my patients told her children that no one should try to feed her if she reached the point where she could no longer feed herself. I liked that so much, I put it in my own advance directive.

I said “Not eating or drinking is a way that people have been dying for centuries. The doctors say dying people don’t feel hunger the way we do, and that this is a comfortable end of life.”

The nearness of death had us in a sort of bubble, a time apart from the regular ticking of clocks and worries about getting and spending. At these times, life can become delicious. The trees and sky looked beautiful. Cars passed and I thought they couldn’t know how near death was.

We need to know the person is gone before real grief can begin.

The magic I’d brought that day resided in my vow as a priest, my beautiful Japanese ritual implements, and my willingness to believe the young woman’s description of her reality. On that day, we trusted each other, and it worked.

Once in a moment of frustration, I asked my Zen teacher “What good is Zen?” Without hesitation he responded “What good is life?” Well, that’s the question. I heard in AA that the antidote to pain was to help others, and that’s a good start.

Around the same time, all those decades ago, I heard an Episcopal priest say we should follow Jesus’ teaching and love one another. That seemed right, but I wanted to raise my hand and ask him how to do it.

This is my understanding of Zen: whatever happens is fine.

what you’re looking for doesn’t come from the outside. It doesn’t lie in having enough friends, as I thought when I didn’t have any; or even in being helpful for a living, as I thought when I was first learning how to be a priest/chaplain. Being connected -- having friends and being helpful -- is a way of life, not a cure for it. Looking for meaning, which is what this is really about, is standing in the river and crying because I’m thirsty.

In a world of turmoil in which many of us are wondering what we should do, I urge patients and friends alike: love more. The world needs more love, let’s create it, I say, and we smile together, as I did with the gaunt young woman with cancer who died so rapidly.