Hospice

This Saturday I am scheduled to attend an all day training class at a hospice. I have volunteered for the so-called "11th Hour" program, which if not obvious from the name means being with the dying in their last moments if they so request.
I'm nervous. Clearly this isn't something I want to mess up. But, I've wanted to do this for quite some time. My father died in the same hospice organization nearly seven years ago and I was so impressed and grateful with their care, and would like to be a part of that.
I don't fear death. I fear lots of things, but not death. I fear growing old, being laid-off from my job, never doing what I am meant to do, being ordinary and/or bourgeois, marriage, babies, menopause, heights. But death is just the way we move from one mode of existence to another. If I am able to assist someone in that transition then I would feel like I've done valuable work in my life. I also hope I can bring comfort to those who remain after their loved one has died; what a tough place to be in life. In a poem I'm working on I wrote,

Grief doesn’t lie.

It is sharp, penetrating,

a deliverer of the inconsolable and undeniable facts

that once given will eventually leave,

though slowly,

easing its way out the door.

This should be quite a learning experience, I look forward to it.