Is Life Sacred?

This morning my hospice client died. When the chaplain first called to tell me about him back in June, I had the feeling the relationship would be extraordinary. We feel in love at our first meeting. Not romantic love, but a meeting of souls that felt like a deep river running underneath our surface conversations and interactions. Before this, I never had a hospice client that I met with week after week. I only volunteered at The Denver Hospice Care Center weekly or monthly and most of the time, I never saw a client again. People who come to the care center were usually only there for a few days or weeks at most.

Last Tuesday, I was certain I would never see him again even though he seemed to have rallied that day. When the call came in this morning, I was in the middle of my meditation practice. Afterwards, I checked the message because something told me it might be about him. I went back to my meditation seat and cried, did tonglen practice for him and sat with the feelings as they came and went. Is life itself sacred? Is it something we should treasure and hold dear? When my first husband chose to disconnect his life support, we knew he would inevitably die. I had to sit by and watch day by day and could not help him along in any way. By law we could not assist the process. Yet weren’t we already killing him by denying him food and drink?

I believe in many spiritual traditions, life is treasured. Murder and suicide are taboo. When my mother was dying, I thought perhaps now I can leave the planet too. She was the most precious person in the world to me at that time. When I talked to a friend about my feelings, she was appalled and said, what about living for her? Wasn’t she enough reason for me to keep on living? When I eventually told my second husband (we divorced the same month my mother died) about my experience he couldn’t believe I wouldn’t have considered that everyone would blame him. In the midst of illness, I have considered again the question of why I would remain here and not put myself out of my misery. Clearly as much as I might love, staying for others is not enough. But perhaps holding all life to be sacred including my own is enough. Can I or anyone take a life even our own without some cosmic repercussions? Maybe I stay alive not out of a sense of sacredness but out a sense of fear, fear that I would have committed some great error.

In my MI interview, my instructor told me that she was praying for me to raise windhorse (my life force) and practicing tonglen for me. Perhaps what is enough is to know that my presence made a difference in the life and death of my client at the end and that maybe it will make a greater and greater contribution as I aspire and deepen my commitment to my bodhisattva vow. As I read the Sakyong’s Amrita practice this morning, he reminded me that my suffering is valuable as it deepens my compassion and capacity to minister to and care about the suffering of others.