Drawing on decades of hospice work — including the Zen Hospice Project's residence at Laguna Honda's thirty-bed wards — Frank Ostaseski recounts what dying often actually looks like: a quiet sense of recognition and coming home rather than fear or drama.
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We walk up to this schoolhouse. I said I said there's the door. You want to go in? Yeah. I said, ' Can I go with you? No. I said, ' Okay, then you go. And um he went up the three steps to the schoolhouse. He described it. He went in the door and then he died. All right. So, one of the places where Zen Hospice serves is at a big hospital called Laguna Honda Hospital. It's a long-term care facility. It's got,00 beds. It's when you're poor and you don't have any insurance, it's where you wind up in San Francisco. And it has it's an old style hospital with these big wards that were 30 people to a ward. Bed after bed after bed, like a gauntlet of beds. And one day I'm walking through down this gauntlet of beds going to a meeting and there's this guy and I I just he gets my attention and I stop. I don't go to my meeting. I go and sit next to him and he's an older African-American man and he's struggling. You know, I think he's actively dying. He's sweating. He's breathing with great difficulty. He's, you know, he's confused. He's all over the place. And I, you know, I I sat down next to him and I said, "Hey, you look like you're working really hard." And then he he pointed toward the sky with his finger and he said, "I just got to get there." And I said, "Okay, okay. Can I come along if I if I promise to keep up? This is how I this is how I work with people." And he he he nodded his head and he grabbed my hand and I said, "I forgot my glasses. I can't see very far into the distance. Can you see? And he described a kind of rising to a kind of plateau, you know. And um so we walked up this hill to this plateau. He was huffing and puffing. It was hard. And we clearly had reached this this top of this hill and I said, "Can you see there further into the distance?" And he said, "Yeah." And he described for me this building which was a one room red schoolhouse. Yeah. But he probably went to school and he came out of Mississippi. He probably went to a schoolhouse like this when he was a kid. So I said, "You want to go?" "Yeah." We walk up to this schoolhouse. I said I said, "There's the door. You want to go in?" "Yeah." I said, "Can I go with you?" "No." I said, "Okay, then you go." And um he went up the three steps to the schoolhouse. He described as many went in the door and then he died. Then he died. I think this was a moment where he was understanding something. I mean, not metaphysically understanding something. He was just going to his idea of something that was familiar and real that was transformative for him that involved new learning for him. I mean, we could make up all kinds of things about it afterwards, but he just found home. And I think that's what happens this in this surrender, and this transformation, you know, it's not so much that we have some big spiritual opening. It's that we come home. We come home to ourselves, you know, to really to ourselves, to the fundamental self you were speaking of earlier when we were talking about love. That's as that's as much as that's as that's as a truth that's a way in which surrender can occur. It's a way I've witnessed it occur. And that might happen, you know, in the final weeks of life or the final days of life or the final moments of life like it did for him. And we might say too late. And I would agree feels too late. You know, let's not wait until that moment to to discover what's meaningful to us. >> Which is my next question, which is, you know, this whole notion of practicing dying. uh dying is a spiritual practice. We can do this in our life. So at the moment of our death, it's easier for us to surrender. We've we it's a well-worn pathway. What would you suggest? Like how do we have our integrity when we're fighting a situation? But hey, wait, this is the time practice dying. >> Yeah. Well, as you well know in in the Buddhist tradition, there's an importance about the moment of death. You know, it's considered great moment. it has conditions that are conducive to our awakening. And I was in a retreat with a well-known Buddhist teacher who you know and uh he was sharing this with the retreat and I I went up to him afterwards. I said you know I love you and I have a deep respect for you but please stop telling people that and he was like what but it says it in the sutas. I said yeah I know but it just leaves people feeling guilty when they don't get to do it. when their mother was on morphine and she wasn't able to be clear in that moment, you know, just let people die the way they die, you know, and let's not sit in judgment of it. >> So, how do we do that in our day-to-day life? I'm I'm a spiritual pragmatist, you know. >> Here's what I do. Watch endings. Watch the way in which you meet endings. you know, yes, the ending of the breath, the ending of the exhale, all those things we learn in practice, but also the end of a meal or the end of a conversation or the way you leave a, you know, conference, you know, how do you meet endings, you know, where did you learn to meet them that way? Are you satisfied with meeting endings in that way? Do you want to change it in any way? You know, um, I think that helps us. We want to know what happens, how we meet the moment of dying. It has a lot to do with our habits of the way in which we meet endings. You know, you know, do we think do you say goodbye to the, you know, people you were just in this conference with? You know, when I was at the hospice, I made a point of going around saying goodbye to everybody in theospice before I went home for the night because I didn't know if I'd see them in the morning. So, I watch endings. Yeah, >> that's a really terrific instruction. You know, I'm reminded of a conference that I was at recently and when it came time to end, I just felt so overwhelmed and I was there with my partner and I and she was like, "Wow, you you you're Hello, are you there?" She's like, "Let's go over and sit over here by ourselves so that you can kind of collect yourself." And we didn't say goodbye to most of the people who were there. But yet I didn't feel I also was present enough to do that. So I can see how watching endings is very helpful and instructive. I'm curious besides the example you gave of saying goodbye to everybody in the hospice when you left. What have you learned about how you want to handle the everyday endings in your life? How are you doing it now? First of all, I would I might reflect back to you that you took extraordinary care of yourself and that's how you met the ending of this. You took extraordinary care of yourself. And yes, maybe you didn't get a chance to say goodbye to everybody, all those things that we might like to do, but you took care of yourself. And I applaud you for doing that. That's a beautiful lesson you learned about how to meet endings. So, thank you for sharing that example with me. Yeah. Um, you know, I teach in Italy a lot. You know, you would never think about leaving a gathering in someone's house without saying goodbye. Here, we ghost it ghost people all the time. You know, we're ready to leave the party, we leave. You know, we we we end relationships on postits for goodness sakes in our culture. So, how do I how do I meet endings? What have you learned about that so that you're more congruent within yourself around it or whatever you aspire to in relationship to endings? >> Yeah. >> You know, after I had one of those strokes, Ramdas called me. He said, "What'd you see? What'd you see?" You know, anything. And I said, "Oh, I was total failure. I was a total failure. I didn't see anything." You know, he said, "Me, too. When it happened for me, all I saw was the pipes as they were rolling me down the hole in the gurnie. [laughter] I don't imagine I have endless time. You know, I u when we hold the truth of our ultimate ending, our our dying, not even sure that's the ultimate ending, but when we hold the truth of dying in our hands, I think that we, you know, we let go a little more easily. I think we're more kind to one another. I think when we recognize that this is our common ground, we can be um these things come forward. We don't take ourselves so seriously. We don't hold on to our ideas with such a tight grasp. And so this is what I notice um in my life is that I don't hold on quite so tightly anymore. Um, you know, we're so driven by our expectations about how it should go and how things should turn out. And the we're outcome driven. Yeah. And so, um, I'm more interested in the transitions, you know, I'm interested in not just when I get to that person's house, but how I get to that person's house. Yeah. What's the walk like or the drive like? I'm more interested in transitions these days than I am in outcomes. So endings are all about that. They're all about not just that moment at the end of our lives or at the end of the breath, but everything that gets us there.