A few days ago I was asked to see a dying veteran in the hospital. It was late in the afternoon on Friday and the day had gotten away from me. As I hurried through the corridors to his unit, I wasn't too concerned about whether I would have enough time to visit with him. After all, he had less than one week to live, and would probably be confused, weak, and unable to tolerate a very long session. As I approached his room, I realized that I was thinking more about whether I would be able to leave work on time than the fact that I was just about to be speaking with a human being about his imminent death. I was a bit chagrined but still looked at my watch. Forty minutes left in the day. Piece of cake.

As I gingerly entered his room, I saw a small emaciated elderly male lying very still, eyes closed, his oxygen tubing positioned awkwardly in his nose. Was he already dead? I greeted him formally as usual ("Mister ____". I never assume familiarity until given permission by the patient). He opened his eyes wide, looked at me, and weakly smiled. "Hello Mr. Jones. I'm Dr. Martin. I'm a psychologist. Your physician asked me to come see you because she thought you were a bit down in the dumps." (I never use the word "depressed", especially with older patients).

"Of course I'm down in the dumps! Who wouldn't be? She told me I only have about four days to live!"

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I learned about the starts and stops of life when I was five years old. I watched in horror as my dog Flicker ran out of the underbrush with a baby rabbit in his mouth. I hit him on the nose and screamed until he dropped the rabbit at my feet. The little creature was lying very still but I could see it's chest rapidly moving up and down. I ran into the house with the bunny and Mother got a shoebox, lined it with Kleenex, and gently laid him inside. She said something about needing to feed him milk, but we didn't have anything with which to feed him. So she drove across town to the Sorg's home (They had two daughters with lots of toys and dolls. ) She borrowed an itsy bitsy doll baby bottle, returned home, and together we tried to get the bunny to suck on the bottle. My memory fades at this point: As a five-year old, I probably got distracted and temporarily forgot about the medical crisis playing out in our kitchen. Later that day, Mother infomed me that, in spite of our efforts, the bunny had died. I looked at the lifeless form in the shoebox for some time, but it continued to just lay there. Motionless. I remember well the sobering realization that a living breathing being had ceased to exist. Alive and then not alive. Not sleeping. Dead. Forever. Gone.

I was to become overly familiar with dying and death over the next fifty years or so. This was just the beginning.
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The veteran warmly invited me "pull up a chair" so I could sit close to him. "So what do you think about dying?" I asked him. "What do you think happens when you die?" (Now, I realize this is not the usual opening topic of conversation for most people meeting for the first time, but we both knew why I was there. Why beat around the bush? After all, the clock was ticking.)

"I think that when I die that's it. No Heaven, no Hell. The end. On the other hand, how would we know? No one has ever come back from death to tell us".

"How do you feel about that?" (Okay, pretty standard psychologeze question.)

"Oh, I suppose there might be something after life. But I don't believe in Heaven. Or Hell. Especially Hell." I thought of the old Blood Sweat & Tears lyrics "I don't believe in Heaven but I pray there ain't no Hell".

"I've had a good life". And he launched into a detailed description of how he had lived his 85 years on this earth. He related how he had been married for 43 years, how his wife had died, and how he had lived with multiple women since then ("Only one at a time"). He told me how he had been raised a devout Catholic, and that he had planned to be a priest until he realized how much he "loved the women". He told me about World War II and how he hid in the ditches and trenches in Germany, how he wore the same wool socks for six weeks until they fell apart, and how he would do it "all over again". He told me about his RV and his horse, his life as a long-haul truck driver, and about the time his boat took on water just as he was hauling in a huge Trout in Lake Chehalus (sp?) in Washington State. He told me about how his first wife was his true love.

"Sounds like you've had a very full life. Very meaningful. ........

[THERAPEUTIC SILENCE]

"So you were raised in the Catholic Religion. Do you still believe in God or Someone like That?"

And on we went. Very deep stuff. Did he believe in anything or anyone beyond himself? It was important for him to process this, because many times I have seen patients who when confronted with mortality, begin to wonder if the religious teachings of their early childhood may indeed be true. As a result, the reality of their unavoidable death can, in the last days, become a very terrifying notion. Especially if they believe, way down deep inside somewhere, that Sister MaryAnn was right, and that they may actually be going to the Hell that they've been trying so hard not to believe most of their adult lives.

"I've had a long life. A good life. And I knew this day would come. I don't like it, but that's the way it is. I've been very lucky. And I'm not afraid".

I could see that he was, indeed, at peace. And maybe our "psychotherapy session" had helped him come to grips with the "start and stop" of life. I thanked him for his time, he thanked me for my time, and we agreed to meet again on Monday, both of us knowing full well that he could very well die before then.

I squeezed his hand, and as I left, I said "You know, you may want to think about that Heaven thing. You may be in for a wonderful surprise." .....He smiled, nodded his head, and closed his eyes.

As I exited through the sliding doors of the hospital, I looked at my watch. Took longer than I had expected but still on time.