The Song of a Spiritual Midwife

There's a part of me that cringes at making comparisons about birth and death. I'm 34 and I am not a midwife ushering in the hopes and dreams of new life, but a midwife to a journey that reveals to us only the end of this mortal experience. Everything in my being can be convinced that the end is the beginning of something terribly wonderful and unimaginably beautiful, but I don't get to see that beginning. I do not get to witness the blossom of a person's life after death or watch how she grows into her true self. All I see is the labor of death, all I can do is hold her hand while she makes that journey on her own.

Here I sit, a spiritual midwife to hundreds of people who labored through death. I witness how precious life is, how precious love and connection are. I desperately want to be a part of this cycle of life. I want to watch a life begin, grow and blossom. I want that life to be one I helped create. But, I will not be creating a baby, a new life within my own body. However, I have so many options for fostering and adopting and watching a life grow and blossom within my care. I'm sure many wonder why I don't just push forward towards those options. I'm not sure why myself at times. I could claim it is the inherent wisdom of a hospice chaplain to honor the time of grieving an unattainable dream. However, I can only say my heart is not ready.

Meanwhile, I spend much of my time with people close to death by singing softly to them. That which calms and quiets the fears of those new to life, also creates peace for those at the end. Tonight as I was perusing books about infertility, I came across the title Unsung Lullabies and it felt like grief was stabbing my heart. Of all the images that break my heart, the worst is the dream of singing my baby to sleep. What an intimate moment of connection. So full of meaning. It is not just that image, but of singing to my baby in the park, in the car, throughout life.

Singing is more than a balm for restless nights. Singing connects an experience with our emotions, our memories and our spiritual selves. While singing Amazing Grace to a patient, not only are memories and emotions evoked, but perhaps even her experience of the sacred. Someday I may hold a baby and sing a lullaby to her and calm the fears of being new to life. Yet, I already am singing lullabies each day to someone new to dying. It is sacred, this role of midwife, whether for birth or for death.

Sacrifice, being brave, and letting go...

My husband and I went to watch the Disney movie Brave. The story triggered a moment of grief. When I saw the mom defend her daughter no matter the cost, even at the risk of her own death, I had this sudden realization. I would never get the chance to prove that kind of love for my own birth child. Why can’t I have that chance? I would willingly sacrifice myself for my own children. I would fight, kill, and use the last breath in my body to make sure they are safe. The sorrow is so profound at those moments. One more thing about being childless that limits my world experience. The question here is not about whether I can have children by means other than through my own body. It is about mourning the possibilities, the future that held my birth children in it, the future that says I will sacrifice everything for them. I cannot conceive. In the car on the way home, as I'm silently crying my heart out, I thought," Did I really do everything in my power to conceive and carry my child?"

 I chose to stop after 2 years of fertility treatments. That is not a long time compared to some. We chose to stop with IUI, artificial insemination, instead of continuing on with IVF, in vitro insemination. It was extremely scary for us to make such a decision. I had desperate moments where I even considered moving to a state that requires health insurance to cover IVF. I thought about weight loss options that I NEVER considered to be healthy options. The truth I took so long to process is that I was compromising my own ethics and morals. In fact, I was already uncomfortable with the amount of resources I spent trying to force my body to do something it did not want or was not able to do.  It’s not about God’s will or fate or destiny. It is about the simple fact my body can’t do something.

 I do have choices and options, many more than the majority of people suffering with infertility. Am I cheating the lives of my future children by not pursuing these options regardless the consequences? The decision I made for myself, the choice my husband and I chose for our family, is that not only am I not cheating them, I am choosing to protect them. The drugs and procedures I used on my body have consequences on my own body. Besides the risks involved in prolonged fertility treatments, there is also the issue of my overall health affecting my pregnancy and the health of my child. Granted, all the potential issues I may have can be managed well most of time with advances in science. However, NOTHING about my situation is "most of the time."  I no longer assume the statistics are in my favor.

 So, while I started out tearing up my soul with thoughts I didn't do enough, I eventually came to the conclusion that I committed the ultimate sacrifice a future mother can make… I chose to stop. The genetic makeup of my children is not significant enough of an issue to torture my body, risk the future health of me, my children, and our family. I realized that I did limitless amounts of research, that I spoke with at least a dozen health professionals, addressed every obstacle and health issue that blocked our road ( and what a relief to finally KNOW  and be able to treat what chronic illnesses I have), I went to counselors, specialists, dieticians. I realized  that I did do everything in my power to conceive and give all that I had to those future children. And when faced with a choice of how far I would go, out of love, I chose to let go.

 Bravery isn't just about facing an obstacle and conquering it. Sometimes bravery is about choosing another path. Sacrifice isn't just for  something  or someone you already have in your life, but sometimes, it is for something or someone you may never meet.  So, thank you, Disney, for helping me realize that I'm not a coward, that I'm not weak, and that I chose a path that causes me more immediate pain, but has great potential for a wonderful future.

My ruminations did not end there, however.  But, enough writing for now.

matters of life and death...

Tonight I stroked the hair of a woman breathing her last breath and told her it was okay to go. She had breathed 3 times in 5 minutes before stopping. Her husband and son were so upset and said she’d died already. Her eyes were glazed over and she had no control over her muscles anymore. But that last breath, as I held her hand, stroked her hair, and told her that her family loved her and it’s okay to go, her mouth moved a lot and for an instant her eyes stopped glazing over. Was she aware? Was she still there? Was her soul, her essence of being still in her body or even in the room?


The hospice nurses talk to the dead bodies and treat their bodies as lovingly as if they were still there, perhaps in the room watching, or perhaps to ease the pain for the families, I don’t know.

I feel I am a spiritually attuned person. I have been present for the deaths of many people and sometimes I can feel their death like a sigh of release and freedom and sometimes I can’t. Sometimes it feels as if the person is dead long before the last breath or muscle twitch and sometimes not. When is it that we die? When does the awareness leave us?

I have witnessed the biofeedback of prayer too many times to count. Whether unconscious, in a coma, or sleeping the sleep before death, their breathing becomes less labored, their heart rate and blood pressure evens out. It’s as if they are listening with their whole bodies… or is it that the body itself is listening even when the mental awareness is gone? Is it possible that the body is aware and “lives” on despite the loss of sentience?

I also have met many people who cannot communicate at all or very little, even though their eyes and slight body language burst with awareness. It’s as if their souls are trapped in their bodies, silently screaming to be let out. Most often by stroke combined with old age, people cannot hear anymore, or only slightly, cannot write or read words anymore, cannot speak anymore. They are left with broken or slurred words or blinking yes or no to demonstrate their primary needs. Hardly anyone takes the time to draw out what they want to tell you. Sometimes this also happens while on a ventilator or another debilitating illness. Sometimes people’s brains and bodies heal and they can at least talk again. But in my line of work, I don’t see that much anymore. Are these people alive even though their bodies betrayed them? Often they don’t last very long; one infection or fracture is all it takes. Or sometimes, with no symptoms of impending death, they just will themselves to die. No signs or symptoms of death, their heart just stops.



Despite life and death being the one thing we all have in common, no body ever talks about it. I can’t tell you how many reactions to conversations about death I have witnessed. I’m not talking about philosophic conversations in a classroom or dusty old tome. I’m talking about intimate contact with death. Even hospice workers and funeral home people skirt around much of the issue. They may respect the mystery of it more and understand the science of it more, but when asked when a person really dies, mostly you get “Who knows?” Don’t stare at it directly and challenge what is ingrained in us, just step back and respect the mystery.

I don’t really expect there to be one blanket answer to any of these questions. So much of it is contextual… and people believe what is comfortable and familiar to them… even if it is fire and brimstone. Ahhh… the after life. That is a subject for a completely different blog.

May God bless all who search for answers and who seek to be reassured there is meaning to all of this.