Auld Lang Syne

As a part of my weekly routine I make several visits to a nursing home where my mother is a resident.  It is a depressing place, not because people are dying but because these people are not really given help to live (other than a bed, a stable room temperature, and something the establishment calls food) until they die.  The ‘residents’ have largely given up hope because they feel (and largely are) abandoned. Their emotional and spiritual needs are not being met.  There are few visits from clergy or family members and the staff provides little but custodial care.

It is a rare ‘resident’ who ever believed that they would one day be in such a place. 

So, what do we the visitors do?  We can be a friend and we can bring a gift. What kind of gift?  A gift of song, of a listening ear, of holding a hand, of being a reader, of giving some spiritual insight or message or hope for something they know they will not receive there.  In short, we minister to them. 

I have found that most of these folks have not really learned of or internalized or are regularly reinforced in their belief of an afterlife.  That can be our greatest gift. People, like me, who visit the elderly or incapacitated need to bring that hope to these people.  Since they cannot do things any longer for themselves it is our finest gift to let them share with us their former life; then we editorially select the wheat from the chaff and remind them of the positive parts they shared and then give to them a vision of a positive afterlife—something to look forward to.  Try to give to them a change of heart. Jesus said, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these [people] . . . , ye have done it unto me” ( Matt. 25:40-45). 

Victory over death and achieving eternal life is the theme of true religion and a theme expressed by thoughtful poets and sculptors for centuries. 

Here are two favorite poems that express the issue—Longfellow’s that can help our perspective and clarify our place as a helper, and Donne’s that can help us get a grip on death as but a transition not to be feared. 

 

A Psalm of Life-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Tell me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act,— act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o’erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait. 

Death Be Not Proud by John Donne (spelling modernized)

Death be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so,

For, those, whom thou think’st, thou dost overthrow,

Die not, poor death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee do go,

Rest of their bones, and souls delivery.

Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,

And poppy, or charms can make us sleep as well,

And better then thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally,

And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die.

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Finally, lets do as the poet Robert Burns suggested:

And we'll take a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.