{"id":456,"date":"2009-07-09T00:04:00","date_gmt":"2009-07-09T00:04:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/deaconsbench\/2009\/07\/nuns-near-death-we-approach-our-living-and-dying-the-same-way-with-discernment.html"},"modified":"2009-07-09T00:04:00","modified_gmt":"2009-07-09T00:04:00","slug":"nuns-near-death-we-approach-our-living-and-dying-the-same-way-with-discernment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/07\/nuns-near-death-we-approach-our-living-and-dying-the-same-way-with-discernment.html","title":{"rendered":"Nuns near death: &#8220;We approach our living and dying the same way, with discernment&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We are finding, more and more, many members of religious vocations are growing older, and dying off.  <\/p>\n<p>Now, those who taught so many of us how to live are also teaching us <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/07\/09\/health\/09sisters.html?_r=1&amp;hpw=&amp;pagewanted=print\">how to die<\/a>: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p><a href=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_0DySLTT4PWo\/SlVh_T0xHrI\/AAAAAAAAF3s\/dE-VS-s7Q-4\/s1600-h\/09sistersA_xl.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt;float: left;cursor: pointer;width: 320px;height: 192px\" src=\"https:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_0DySLTT4PWo\/SlVh_T0xHrI\/AAAAAAAAF3s\/dE-VS-s7Q-4\/s320\/09sistersA_xl.jpg\" alt=\"\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a> Gravely ill with heart disease, tethered to an oxygen tank, her feet swollen and her appetite gone, Sister Dorothy Quinn, 87, readied herself to die in the nursing wing of the Sisters of St. Joseph convent where she has been a member since she was a teenager.<\/p>\n<p>She was surrounded by friends and colleagues of nearly seven decades. Some had been with her in college, others fellow teachers in Alabama at the time of the Selma march, more from her years as a home health aide and spiritual counselor to elderly shut-ins.<\/p>\n<p>As she lay dying, Sister Dorothy declined most of her 23 medications not essential for her heart condition, prescribed by specialists but winnowed by a geriatrician who knows that elderly people are often overmedicated. She decided against a mammogram to learn the nature of a lump in her one remaining breast, understanding that she would not survive treatment.<\/p>\n<p>There were goodbyes and decisions about giving away her quilting supplies and the jigsaw puzzle collection that inspired the patterns of her one-of-a-kind pieces. She consoled her biological sister, who pleaded with her to do whatever it took to stay alive.<\/p>\n<p>Even as her prognosis gradually improved from hours to weeks and even months, Sister Dorothy\u2019s goal was not immortality; it was getting back to quilting, as she has. She spread her latest on her bed: Autumnal sunflowers. \u201cI\u2019m not afraid of death,\u201d she said. \u201cEven when I was dying, I wasn\u2019t afraid of it. You just get a feeling within yourself at a certain point. You know when to let it be.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>A convent is a world apart, unduplicable. But the Sisters of St. Joseph, a congregation in this Rochester suburb, animate many factors that studies say contribute to successful aging and a gentle death \u2014 none of which require this special setting. These include a large social network, intellectual stimulation, continued engagement in life and spiritual beliefs, as well as health care guided by the less-is-more principles of palliative and hospice care \u2014 trends that are moving from the fringes to the mainstream.<\/p>\n<p>For the elderly and infirm Roman Catholic sisters here, all of this takes place in a Mother House designed like a secular retirement community for a congregation that is literally dying off, like so many religious orders. On average, one sister dies each month, right here, not in the hospital, because few choose aggressive medical intervention at the end of life, although they are welcome to it if they want.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe approach our living and our dying in the same way, with discernment,\u201d said Sister Mary Lou Mitchell, the congregation president. \u201cMaybe this is one of the messages we can send to society, by modeling it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Primary care for most of the ailing sisters is provided by Dr. Robert C. McCann, a geriatrician at the University of Rochester, who says that through a combination of philosophy and happenstance, \u201cthey have better deaths than any I\u2019ve ever seen.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> Read on for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/07\/09\/health\/09sisters.html?_r=1&amp;hpw=&amp;pagewanted=print\">more<\/a>.  There is grace here, amazing grace. <\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size:78%\"><b>PHOTO:<\/b>  <i>by James Estrin\/New York Times<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We are finding, more and more, many members of religious vocations are growing older, and dying off. Now, those who taught so many of us how to live are also teaching us how to die: Gravely ill with heart disease, tethered to an oxygen tank, her feet swollen and her appetite gone, Sister Dorothy Quinn,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":365,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ripped-from-the-headlines","category-vocations"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Nuns near death: &quot;We approach our living and dying the same way, with discernment&quot; - The Deacon&#039;s Bench<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/deaconsbench\/2009\/07\/nuns-near-death-we-approach-our-living-and-dying-the-same-way-with-discernment.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Nuns near death: &quot;We approach our living and dying the same way, with discernment&quot; - The Deacon&#039;s Bench\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"We are finding, more and more, many members of religious vocations are growing older, and dying off. 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