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BY GRETCHEN KEISER
Staff Writer
ATLANTA--The very word “death” conjures up a blank finality when
it is spoken out loud, and often it is a word people avoid speaking or even
thinking about.
Yet Sister Margaret McAnoy, IHM, who has been a hospice chaplain for three
years, has found that there is a language, however unfamiliar and unwelcome to
us, that defines some of the landscape of dying and grieving.
Small in stature, with a halo of white hair framing twinkling eyes, Sister
McAnoy is the antidote to any vision of the grim reaper.
She first got involved in this ministry through “Tuesday nights at the
Shrine,” a weekly dinner offered at the Shrine of the Immaculate
Conception in Atlanta for people with AIDS.
When the pastor, Father John Adamski, asked her why she was staying in the
kitchen cooking when she could be out talking to the guests, Sister McAnoy
said, “I don’t know how to talk to people who are dying.” To
which the pastor responded, “They are living with AIDS.”
The conversation started her on a new ministry. She began spending many
hours ministering to Shrine parishioners who were dying and then completed a
clinical pastoral education program at Northside Hospital. She next took a
position as the chaplain at what is now SunAlliance Hospice in Dunwoody. The
in-patient hospice serves people who have a life expectancy of six months or
less who are referred by a doctor. While in the hospice, those who are dying
and their families and friends are ministered to by a team, including medical
staff, social workers and Sister McAnoy.
The medical staff provides palliative care, striving to keep patients as
pain free as possible and to assist them to die with dignity. The hospice,
which is state-licensed and regulated, is a place where a homelike atmosphere
is maintained, where visiting hours are around the clock and where even pets
are welcome. Hospice care also includes a year of bereavement support for the
family following the death of the patient.
Sister McAnoy’s chaplaincy consists of “doing a lot of listening
and praying,” she says. “Once they are in that hospice, they are on
my prayer list.”
Her ministry is available, but not insisted on. She will pray with and for
people and those around them, but she is also at hand for people who are angry
and need to talk. She is chaplain to the hospice staff, who experience grief as
their patients die. She is frequently asked by people who do not have families
to plan their funerals or lead memorial services, a work of mercy in which she
is helped by people in the archdiocesan Cursillo movement.
In-patient hospice is an option people are gradually realizing they can
choose when death is imminent, an environment where medical technology will not
be utilized anymore to stave off an unavoidable death. The setting is quiet,
with privacy and the freedom for family members to be there or to leave so they
can get rest themselves.
When death comes, “there might not be somebody in the room, but they
never die alone,” Sister McAnoy said. “This wonderful communion of
saints we believe in as Catholics are there with them.”
Soft-spoken and reflective, a good story-teller with a dry wit and an
appreciation for human foibles, Sister McAnoy shares insights she has learned
from her years of ministry.
“One thing I’ve learned is that death is natural,” she said.
“I have never met anybody who really wanted to die. A lot of people say
they are not afraid of it. Most folks don’t want to leave families.”
“I’ve learned that there is no need to be afraid of death,”
she added, saying that she gently encourages people to think of heaven, using a
book called “The Next Place” as a springboard for the imagination.
“I always ask people what they imagine heaven must be like.”
Many people are familiar, through the groundbreaking work of Dr. Elizabeth
Kubler-Ross, with stages of dying. Sister McAnoy said in her experience at
hospice, it is the families of the dying who go through the stages of denial,
bargaining, anger, depression and acceptance. However, the progression is
unique to each person and does not happen in a predictable order, or move from
one stage to another in a clear and defined manner.
“Our grieving is as individual as we are. No two people go through the
grieving process the same way, even in one family,” she said. “The
chaplain’s job is just to be present to whatever they need. If they need
to be angry about a parent dying, then you are with them in their anger.”
She often helps people to have some insight into what they are experiencing
by recalling the pain, the time, the rest that is needed to heal from physical
injuries and wounds, from broken bones and surgery. Then she tells them,
“Grief is the deepest wound you’ve ever had.”
She recounted the story of a friend whose husband dropped dead at a church
meeting, leaving her devastated by the shock and finality of losing her spouse
in this way. Friends rallied around, but after a year people began encouraging
her to get on with her life and get over the loss. This advice, often
well-meaning, is not helpful and not something a grieving person can
accomplish, the chaplain said.
“Your life will never ever be the same again,” Sister McAnoy said.
“There is a void there. You can’t try to fill it up. Life goes on,
but it doesn’t get back to normal. It can’t.”
A hospice chaplain for 20 hours a week, she balances the intensity of the
ministry by still serving as co-spiritual director to the Cursillo movement
which rejuvenates and sustains her. Sister McAnoy said that she sees a need for
individual Catholics to support one another in the process of grieving. She
also sees a need for more parishes to offer ministry to the grieving or to
develop further the grief support they already offer. The Good Grief program
used by the Church of St. Ann in Marietta and some other parishes is
“wonderful,” she said. Volunteers are needed at the hospice, although
it is a service that requires a special gift.
“Some churches do a wonderful job of supporting their people.
Protestant churches’ Sunday school groups will come in” to visit
church members who are in the hospice, she said, something she hopes will
develop more for Catholics through the bonds of friendship made in RENEW 2000
small groups.
“I want to get the message out that you can be there for them, but you
can’t take (grief) away from them and you can’t put timelines on
it,” Sister McAnoy said. “I see it as a privilege when people allow
you in their grieving by talking with you or just wanting you around.”
“You can’t tell people how they should grieve. You just
can’t. Some will be helped by a (support) group. Others that’s the
last thing they want to do...Some people can go to the cemetery every week.
Some people can’t go at all. Let the person who’s grieving call the
shots.”
One of the things that has helped her in her ministry, she said, is her own
experiences with death and grieving in the loss of close family members, like
her brother, and close friends of many years, like Bonnie and Jim O’Hara.
“Grief comes in waves,” she observed. “Sometimes you are
having a really good day and you hear a song on the radio and
‘whoosh’.”
“I think it is the oddest things that will trigger memories,” she
added. “I went to see the movie “What Dreams May Come” and I had
to leave in the middle. I could not separate it from Bonnie and Jim.”
To walk through the time of grief in grace, she shares the wisdom she has
acquired. “I try to remember the funny things that happened with that
person.” She has a gift for telling stories and bringing vivid, even
humorous memories of the person to life at tough moments during the funeral.
She said she advises families to put many photographs of the person out at the
funeral home.
“Miracles come in all shapes and sizes,” she said. “Perhaps
the miracle is that there is peace about dying. Maybe the miracle is that you
can let them go and have a peace about it.”
“I consider what I do at the hospice as a privilege. To walk with
people right to the threshold is an awesome thing, I think.”
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