On Living by Kerry Egan

The other day my daughter told me a friend of hers is a cousin to an author named Kerry Egan. She said she told her friend that I probably knew this author. Turns out I had heard of Kerry Egan and I looked it up -- Kerry Egan was at the Faith & Writing Festival this year. I remember wanting to go to her session but there were so many good ones at the same time, I did not make it to her talk.

The book is called On Living and it is stories of people who are dying. Egan is a hospice chaplain. There are many stories she cannot tell because they are the private stories of the people Egan served. but there were also many people who asked Egan to share their stories in the hopes it would help others.

I think being a hospice chaplain is a beautiful vocation. While my brother was dying, the hospice chapter he was in had a chaplain. It was wonderful to pray with her and to know she was there. We had our own chaplain  in the family (my dad), but the chaplain still was an important part of our experience during Dan's dying days. My niece is becoming a hospital chaplain and will, I'm sure, soon have many stories, too, of people dying or going through some of the most trying moments of their lives.

I finished this book several days ago, and one thing I remember the most is that Egan said she was a loving presence to the people she served. In some cases, she would even imagine love emanating from her and enveloping the person. Isn't that beautiful? It's a way to serve -- and to love -- even when the person may be totally unaware of you.

Egan seems somewhat ambivalent about her own faith. She did not openly profess to be a Christian, but there is no doubt she is called to this work, and that she believes in "things beyond our ken," to borrow from a "Sound of Music" song. She gave several examples of that. And she does talk about her belief in God, so there is faith in her life.

The first story quotes a woman she is visiting who says, "I always wished I could meet a writer, and tell him my stories, so other people could hear them and not make the same mistakes I made." She laments that she never did meet a writer. Egan at first did not say anything because, even though she had written a book years before, "I wasn't here as a writer now." She listened as Gloria, her client, repeated several times how she had "prayed and prayed and prayed" for a writer to tell her stories. Finally, Egan writes, "It was getting ridiculous. I hesitated for one more silent minute, then said, 'Gloria, did I ever tell you I was a writer?'" Gloria was overjoyed and absolutely certain that "the Holy Spirit sent [Egan} to [her]."

Egan said that Gloria's request was what inspired her to write this book. She wrote, "Almost always, their stories were about shame or grief or trauma: My child died in my arms...My wife left me for another man while I was a soldier...I killed someone...My husband beat my children and I did nothing to stop it because I was afraid..." and on. Egan said she didn't know if she was wiser from hearing the stories, but she "[does] know that it can heal your soul."

She also wrote, "When I started working in hospice, I didn't yet understand that everyone -- everyone-- is broken and crooked." Isn't that sad? Reading this has contributed, I think, to the empathy I feel toward others, even when I don't like them for whatever reason. Of course, I fail to be kind and show empathy over and over, but I do believe I have gotten better at it, and knowing that everyone is "broken and crooked" is a part of the reason I've grown.

Egan is very vulnerable in her writing. She doesn't just tell the touching, amazing stories, she also tells of times when she failed to respond in the way that was best for the client, or when she failed to show up, out of fear or uncertainty.

Egan wrote about the shame and embarrassment she felt when someone mocked her for her answer to what chaplains do: "Mostly we talk about their families," and mostly she listens. But, Egan says, "What I didn't understand [then]...is that people talk to the chaplain about their families because that is how we talk about God. That is how we talk about the meaning of our lives. That is how we talk about the big spiritual questions of human existence."

I was struck by this:

The meaning of our lives cannot be found in books or lecture halls or even churches or synagogues. It's discovered through these acts of love. If God is love, and I believe that to be true, then we learn about God when we learn about love. The first, and usually the last, classroom of love is the family.

And: "The spiritual work of being human is learning how to love and how to forgive."

I don't want to write the stories Egan heard and tells. She does a much better job of telling those stories than I could. She also writes about the many things she learned as she took those stories to heart. One was secrets. It has struck me, too, as it did Egan, that there are elaborate, big secrets in families that, amazingly, are kept secret for years and years. Egan wrote that when people told her their secrets, it wasn't really a confession, like you would give to a priest, but it was an unburdening. I remember a friend who confessed a secret and said, "The truth really does set you free." Until then, I had never thought of that meaning of the saying.

Egan also wrote of regret being a harbinger of hope -- another thing I had never thought of. "Hope is the belief that better things are possible. Regret shows us what those better things we hope for are...It's an unasked-for chance...to imagine what else could be."

Egan wrote about "living in the gray," and how being kind sometimes -- often -- makes you see that most things are not black and white. She relates a story of a client's husband who finds out what hospital worker is stealing medication, but he knows she does it to sell it in order to care for her family. She writes, too, of her own gray story, when a woman in a store condemns her as a bad mother, not knowing that Egan was suffering from postpartum psychosis.Then Egan herself says condemning words to that woman, causing the woman to cry, and Egan realizes now that she herself was making a judgement about that woman, as if it were black and white.

Egan told a story of a woman who asked for a medicine man--a shaman--to help with her healing as she died. When they found a shaman, she came to the client's room and told Egan to stand in a corner and "be strong." As the shaman commands the evil spirit in the client to leave, Egan feels a powerful evil presence coming near to herself, and understands why she was told to be strong. Then, later, they find out the client's story was a sham, yet Egan knows something happened in that room. It is true there are mysterious, un-understandable things that we hear of and experience. They are not only unable to be understood because they defy laws of physics or natural rules we all know, but also because they don't seem to follow any logic in who experiences them. Why should one person feel comfort as they die, seemingly from the presence of a loved one who has passed away, while others do not? Why should we hear, see, or feel supernatural things in one instance, and not in another? It truly does not make sense.

Egan concludes by saying:

It doesn't have to be that life is beautiful but it must end. It can be that life is beautiful...and still, as much as we may not want it to be so, it ends. It can be both beautiful and, by the very truth that it ends, full of loss and tragedy and trauma. The two can coincide. They do coincide.

It reminds me of what I hear Krista Tippet often talk about, living "yes, and," living in "the space between" black and white, as Egan calls it. "I've learned that it's far more interesting and ultimately peaceful to live in the space between."