Perspective on Goodbye

A few weeks ago, I visited a woman who I have only seen a handful of times. Despite her fairly short time with us so far, we have built a very strong therapeutic relationship. This is dangerous for me, because I know that one way or the other, she will leave our services. She will either get better and be inappropriate for hospice services or she will decline further and die. This is the hardest aspect of hospice care. As a hospice worker, I need to be able to protect myself, keep boundaries between myself and my clients. Every once-in-a-while, however, I don't do a very good job.

This particular client played organ for 30+ years in her church and enjoys a lot of hymns that I've never heard before, so she's been challenging me and stretching me musically. She's still very gracious, though, when I mess up. She still has her cognitive abilities, so she converses easily and I do not feel like I need to "perform" or pretend to be extroverted in our sessions. It's one visit I know I can be myself. I say all this to say that during our last session, she was tearful when we were saying goodbye. She had a pretty quick decline for a few days and she was saying what she thought would be our final goodbye. She shook my hand and said, with tears, "I don't know that I should say 'See you later' this time." I thought for a second and said, "It doesn't matter to me what you say. Either way, whether we see each other or not, I'm glad we've had this time. If we have more time, I'll be very happy, but we can't count on that. We should be grateful for the time we've had and take it one day at a time." That seemed to put it in perspective for her and we said our goodbyes.

Those conversations are always hard to have with people. I guess, on some level, it's a conversation we should all be having all the time. There are so many things that could happen - car accidents, disease, etc - that could make "see you later" not applicable. I know a lot of people take Easter weekends to spend time with family and friends, so I encourage you to take this to heart. Nothing is guaranteed, so make sure every goodbye is suitable for be the last.