Sudden Death: Intervention Skills for the Emergency Services by Tricia Scott

Author:Tricia Scott
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030331405
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

7.4 Humanist Spiritual Support

This section provides a Humanist response to sudden death; however, as a new member of the team, I have rarely been called in response to sudden death in the hospital. There are several possible reasons. In part, it is because I only work a few hours a week, so I am less well-known across the hospital, and I am only on-call once a month, although this does not mean that I would not come in if I was asked. I think perhaps more significant is that at the time of a sudden and unexpected death, the thoughts of those present tend to turn to whether there is a need for specific religious prayer or ritual. At present, there are still relatively few Humanist or non-religious Chaplains or Pastoral Care Workers employed within the NHS, so we have much to do to demonstrate the support that we can offer.

As a Humanist, I do not enact any commonly recognised rituals. For those who have no religious belief, there is no common culture in the way we respond to death; there is no agreed liturgy or any recognised tasks or rituals that we must undertake at the end of life. Moreover, we do not have shared beliefs in an afterlife as offered by religion, but what I have learned from the death of my own loved ones and what I am recognising in my work within the hospital is that whatever our beliefs, whether in a deity or not, in heaven or not or in an afterlife or not, there can be a need for something that marks the death event, something that acknowledges the sometimes awe-inspiring, sometimes deeply shocking and sometimes unbelievable or unreal moment or the almost unnoticed moment when the living breathing person takes no further breaths. This is when your own life as you have known it comes to an end and your relationship with the one you have loved begins to change.

So what as a Humanist can I offer to someone who like me has no religious beliefs on the occasion of sudden death? I bring my experience as a Humanist Funeral Celebrant where we commit the body of the loved one to its end, and I commit their memory to the hearts and minds of their loved ones—and I am recognising how this applies at the time of death within the hospital. On one occasion, I was asked to help with the very sudden and totally unexpected death of one young man. He had died suddenly of an unrecognised disease and had been sufficiently resuscitated to be on life support. The brain stem and other tests indicated that this should be withdrawn. His partner, a non-believer herself, wanted him to have a blessing even though he was a non-believer because she knew this would bring his family comfort. At first, I felt somewhat at a loss. I had no such ‘blessing’ of my own to draw on, and I felt that I could not offer him a blessing that I could not wholeheartedly believe.

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