Finding Beauty Where You Least Expect It

I’m going to let you in on a secret: spending time with someone who is close to death can be beautiful.

In my work, I occasionally spend time with people who are close to death. When the dying person is alone, or bitter, or angry, or in denial about what’s obvious to everyone around them, it is tragic and difficult. But often, the dying person has found some peace (or is ready to be done with their pain) and is with people they love, and that is where you can find beauty.

Several years ago, I had the honor of spending time with one of my friends who was dying during her very last days. And last weekend I spent time with another friend (who was also a colleague and mentor and so much more) not as close to death but who is living with dementia. The time I spent with these friends—one close to death, one who has lost so much of herself—felt more real and more precious than almost any other times in my life. I’ve been mulling over why that is, and this is what I’ve come up with:

Each of us wants to be known and loved for who we are. But we walk around pretending that we don’t need each other, that we’re not vulnerable, that we are fine just the way we are. We cover our most private places up: literally and figuratively. We save our vulnerabilities for the safest places and the safest people; and some of us never feel secure enough to let our guard down except when we’re alone. The stupid thing about this is that the more we pretend that we don’t need to be known and loved, the more impossible it becomes to be known and loved.

Someone who is very close to death doesn’t have the time or the energy to keep up this pretense, and they don’t have the time or the energy for you to keep it up for them, either. When you’re spending time with a person who is dying, you become your truest selves, and the love you feel for each other is clear and clean. It’s not muddled up in pretension and imitations and deception. You know each other for who you really are, and you love each other because of who you really are. It is a beautiful gift.

I found a similar kind of beauty this past weekend spending time with my friend who has dementia. When we worked together, it would have been awkward to tell her that I loved her. It would have been weird to hold her hand. But when I visited her, it felt easy and natural to do both of those things. And I was so glad I did. I don’t know if she will recognize me the next time I see her. I don’t even know if I will see her again before she dies. But I was able to tell her and show her how much she meant to me, and I’m so, so glad I had the opportunity to do that.

It is incredibly sad and difficult to witness death or pain or illness. But our society makes all of this worse by treating these inevitabilities with tremendous shame, even though they are inescapable. It’s like we’ve committed ourselves so deeply to the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness that we have to pretend that death and sadness aren’t our unalienable rights, too. But that’s ridiculous! There can’t be happiness without sadness, and death is an integral part of life. There’s nothing shameful about death or aging or illness. Those things just are. And by treating them with shame, we do ourselves such a disservice.

I wish we lived our lives more authentically. I wish we lived as if we weren’t going to live forever. I wish we said the important things to each other without waiting for a last illness or death. I wish we were our true selves with each other more often. If we could stop pretending so much, I believe the world would be more beautiful.

So, I’m telling each of you now: I am thankful for you—yes, you. I treasure you. The world is better because you’re in it.

Did you let that sink in?

Did it lift your spirit a little bit?

Then why not share that gift with someone you care about? Be a little weird and awkward and tell someone how much they mean to you. Not just because life is uncertain and you may never have another chance to tell them, but also because the we need all the love we can get—and (to paraphrase Sir Paul) the more we get, the more we give.