May be used as you like
May 01.2016
A TIME TO LEARN FROM THE NORTHERNERS
Pain is apparently different in the South than the North : South ( of Prince Albert) there is Intolerable Pain and it is discussed forever. In the North we just have pain and we shut up about it.
Our neighbour Mr. Thomas McKenzie had cancer of the bone for well over ten years. Many times he was on the verge of death yet returned home time and time again. I do not recall him using the phrase Intolerable Pain or anyone else using the phrase about him. However many times people met at his house for prayer and singing. He did not die alone and he had a wake and funeral which extended to two communities at least . He was not abandoned . He has a grave and marker beside Holy Trinity Church in Stanley Mission.
When Mr. Isaac Charles Sr.was dying ( after falling ill over a flu shot ) many people gathered at the hospital bed in La Ronge. Sometimes they prayed. Sometimes they sat still making sure there was never a time that he was alone. Children, grandchildren, youth crowded in the hall way and waiting room to be with him.
At Southend and at many other communities people gather at the grave site and make sure that they are personally involved in covering the casket with earth. Even little children take up a handful of dirt and throw it in the grave. Everyone faces the reality of death together Children grow up knowing death and also the dignity that must be accorded to the dying and the dead.
We Northerners assume that sickness brings pain but we assume that is part of the baggage of living. To escape pain and discomfort is not the ultimate goal in life.. Courage and perseverance is expected . Suicide rips everyone as a terrible demonic monster. Frequency doesn’t nullify the horror.
When people died in beds either at home or in a hospital facing a man on a cross they, their family and caregivers could remember there was Someone who had already suffered and died and promised us that death was not the end. Our job was to endure to the end as He had done for us.
St. Jean de Brebeuf was tortured for at least 12 hours. He rallied his Huron Christians who were also to be burned at the stake. They knew that if they recanted their Faith the Iroquois would let them go. None of them did. One Iroquois insisted on eating the heart of Brebeuf . He wanted the courage of Brebeuf which he saw was superior to that of the Iroquois . He spent the rest of his life spreading the Gospel.
Now endurance and courage are irrelevant. Comfort is everything. Whose comfort matters is not necessarily the dying.. One mustn’t be a burden on the tax payer or on family and important schedules. What if someone misses out on a promotion if she sits by her dying mother? !
In the name of Comfort we let doctors murder and family and dying agree to it. Doesn’t that make you uncomfortable? Gay
