The Final Act of Living
Reflections of a Longtime Hospice Nurse
$15.00 per copy
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Barbara Karnes, RN, shares insights and perceptions from 27 years of working with people during their final act of living.
We will all be affected by dying, death, and grief at some time in our lives. This book offers clarity about topics that are clouded with fear.
The Final Act of Living reads like a heart-felt novel yet has the content of a textbook. It explores the topics of living with a life-threatening illness, understanding the signs of approaching death from disease, the normal grieving process, living wills, and other end-of-life issues.
The Final Act of Living is used as:
- A resource on end-of-life issues;
- A volunteer hospice training handbook;
- A reference book for anyone working with end-of-life issues (lay ministers, social workers, counselors, nurses, and chaplains);
- An easy read for anyone interested in dying and grief;
- A text book in college and university classes.
I work with dying people, all my patients die.
I see grief and sadness and anger and depression.
Most is an individual's internal anguish needing to be brought out, to be worked out.
Nowhere is it written that life will always be the way we'd like it to be.
Dying presents us with perhaps the greatest opportunity for growth we have ever had.
This struggle is part of life; it is a learning process--
Learning to live
Learning to die
That is what physical life is all about.
There is no pain for me here.
Today I walked into a hospital room.
My patient/friend was strapped in a wheelchair,
Facing a blank wall,
His back turned to a blaring TV and the door,
His body heavy and uncomfortable falling limply over the side of the chair,
His arm blue from hanging too long a time at his side.
Unable to talk because of a brain tumor,
Unable to maneuver his body,
He was trapped by someone else's hurriedness.
Poop on his hands, from poop in his pants,
He took my hand in his and kissed it--
A thank you for getting him back into bed
And my heart cried.
Here lies my pain!
The indignities that need not be in life for lessons to be learned,
The indignities imposed upon human beings by human beings,
Here in lies my pain!
~Barbara Karnes