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Archive for the ‘Wilderness/Out-of-doors’ Category

A Divorce and the Mountain of Grief — Priceless

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How can one mountain hold so much grief and give back so much new life?

A flood of memories came back to answer that question.

“Schloss” is German for “castle”

In my blog and the video I posted last week, I talked about my recent backpacking trip to the summit of The Big Schloss with my future son-in-law. As I shared this story at my weekly men’s group meeting, one of the guys, who has known me for over 30 years, said, “Hank, didn’t you throw your wedding ring off that mountain?”

Well…yes. But there’s a bigger story.

In June 1996, my wife moved out the day after our 26th wedding anniversary. In the following months, I went through all the stages of dying or grief I have witnessed in my patients and their families while I was serving as their hospice chaplain. In the face of an unwanted divorce, I experienced denial, anger, and depression, along with a layer of a sense of betrayal and rejection. And like those families, I was waiting for the last breath, or in this case, a “Final Decree of Divorce” granted by a Fairfax County judge.

I imagined I would stand before a judge in a courtroom and hear them say, “It’s over.” But it didn’t happen that way.

My wife called me two days before the court date to let me know it was happening and asked if I wanted to be there. I said, “Not particularly, but do you have a preference?” She said she would rather I not be there, and it was so.

The court date was October 2nd, 1997. Months before, I had made plans with one of my best friends, James, to go on a one-night backpacking trip starting on October 1st. Destination? You guessed it: The Big Schloss.

A day for an ending and beginning

James had traveled from Atlanta to attend a workshop at the Lost River Retreat Center in West Virginia, only a few miles from the Schloss. I picked him up and drove to the trailhead. We walked the two miles up the mountain and set up camp near the summit.

An excerpt from a piece I wrote about this at the time:

“The end came with a suddenness that did not allow me to plan how I wanted the day to go. What happened was better than anything I could have scripted.… What better way to start the last day of my marriage than with a good friend on a mountaintop, drinking coffee and watching the sunrise.  

“We hiked the two miles into our campsite yesterday and set up camp near the summit. Last night, we sat by the fire and braced ourselves against the cold wind. We talked for hours. James slept in the tent, and I stayed outside so I could keep watching the stars all night long.

James at sunrise

“I woke up at first light and put a pot of coffee on the stove. James soon joined me, sitting on the rock on the edge of a cliff which drops perhaps a hundred feet to the ground below. The darkness was being weakened as the light grew. We sipped our coffee and ate pop-tarts…. This place, the Big Schloss, was home to me.

“James knew what this day meant to me. He mentioned it. We discussed it briefly. He read a Celtic prayer and a scripture. As the judge and my soon-to-be ex-wife were each preparing for their days, we were walking down the mountain. Someone to walk with me. What a wonderful metaphor! Too often, over these past sixteen months since she moved out, I have had a great sense of someone walking with me. Sometimes there was nobody with me, but I was not alone. Now James walked with me on the first day of a new life.”

The Ring Toss

Photo by eyestetix on unsplash

Fast-forward nineteen months to May 1999, and I prepared for yet another trip up the Schloss — this time with another friend who was attending the same workshop at the Lost River Retreat Center. She had told me about a ritual she did to help her process her own sense of grief and anger. She threw her wedding band from her failed marriage into the water off a ferry at the Outer Banks. Hmmm?

Yet again, I wrote of what happened next, this time in June 1999:

“A couple weeks ago, I had a little ritual to symbolize my moving on from my marriage. I was camping with a friend on my favorite close-to-home campsite, the Big Schloss, a rock outcrop on the Virginia-West Virginia border.…

Ritual site for the day of divorce and ring toss

“The air was so clear I didn’t even bring a tent, and we slept under the stars. I brought my wedding band, anticipating a ‘ring toss’ ceremony. After arising in the crisp May air, I took the ring out of my pack. This is the ring my wife had inscribed with the scripture reference for the passage ‘Wherever you go, I will go. Your people will be my people.…’

“I stood on the edge of the cliff, looking down at the trees and rocks below. I held the ring. I was surprised that I felt as emotional as I did. I thought this would be a mere formality, tossing the ring into the wilderness. But I threw it. Another little piece of letting go. It landed somewhere on the floor of an old-growth hardwood forest. The fall leaves will cover it in October, and the winter snows will pack it down further. Next spring, perhaps the dogwoods or redbud will bloom nearby. It’s going to be there for a long time to come.

“I was surprised by the tinge of sadness I felt at the prospect of tossing away this symbol of my marriage. I have been so happy in my alone life. I have a normalcy in the living of my days. I have no desire to be reunited with my ex-wife. So, what was the grief about?

These mountains absorb grief

“I have concluded that everyone experiences a certain amount of sadness and grief in response to any loss. If we have not completed our quota of grief, it will come out at a future date, and almost anything can set if off. So, I held this ring in my hand and got a little more of the sadness out. I won’t have that same exact piece of grief to do over again…that feels better.”

A quarter century has passed since those two events on the Big Schloss. The mountain is still giving me its gifts. I even put up a recent short video about how special this piece of God’s green earth is to me. This place has quite easily absorbed my grief. I’ll be back.

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Author Chaplain Hank Dunn, MDiv, has sold over 4 million copies of his books Hard Choices for Loving People and Light in the Shadows (also available on Amazon).

Follow Hank: LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube

“Can I do this again?” — Men, Aging, and Performance

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“They” say men of a certain age are concerned about performance. Last week, while hiking the Big Schloss in 97-degree heat, this crossed my mind as I asked myself, “Can I do this again?”

Sundown on the Big Schloss

My bladder cancer surgery in May canceled a long-planned trip to see my adult children and my teenaged grands. I missed my grandson’s high school graduation and my youngest daughter’s engagement party. Unfortunately, those events can never be duplicated, but I hoped this trip would compensate for lost time.

In the last two weeks, I made the delayed trip to the D.C. suburbs of Virginia, my home from 1978 to 2017. Just like when I traveled the country speaking, once I had a destination, I looked into how I could spend some time in the great outdoors — preferably including wilderness travel.

“Grandpa, how did you get into hiking and backpacking?”

Hank & grands on 2016 hike

I used to take my three grands on overnight backpacking or car camping trips. They have slept with bugs, spiders, mice, snakes, and other inconveniences and even encountered a bear. They were always good sports at the time but have declined invitations to repeat any of these adventures in recent years.

So now on my trips to visit family, I try to plan a meal with just my grandkids and me to get some quality time and have an “ask-me-anything” session. This time, we went to Chili’s right after I returned from an overnight in the woods.

Out to eat with the grands.

Over hamburgers and fries, my grandson asked, “Grandpa, how did you get into hiking and backpacking?” I thought back. It was actually a chance reading of a Redbook magazine article. In 1971, while I was in seminary, I had taken their grandmother to the doctor’s office. This was back before we could occupy ourselves with phones when waiting rooms were piled with old magazines.

Hank, left, and Charles. First backpack trip, 1974

The Redbook article was about a five-day backpacking trip into the backcountry of Yellowstone National Park. The writer was in one of the most visited parks in the country, and they never encountered another human during the whole trip. I said to myself, “I want that.”

Thus, my love of wilderness camping was born in the waiting room of a doctor’s office. It took a while, but my first overnight carry-everything-on-my-back-away-from-roads-and-the-grid trip was on March 1, 1974.

My most recent trip was July 16, 2024.

“Can I do this again?”

As I mentioned, while planning this last trip, I wanted to add a night in the woods amid visits to family and friends. The Big Schloss was an ideal choice, less than a two-hour drive from Northern Virginia. “Schloss” is the German word for castle, and the rocks on the summit indeed look like a castle from below.

No tent, just a tarp, priceless

It is only a two-mile hike and 850 feet of elevation gain to the campsite near the summit. I have probably slept on this mountain thirty times since my first trip there in 1980, when I introduced my then-six-year-old son to backpacking.

While I was a hospice chaplain, I even figured out a way to hike the Big Schloss on a workday in the summer. Because of the long daylight hours, I could leave my last patient at 5 PM, arrive at the trailhead by 7, and set camp by sundown around 9. Then, I would wake at first light in the morning, pack up, drive home, shower, and be at work by 10.

I invited my future son-in-law, Will, to join me on last week’s trip. Though he never backpacked or spent much time in the woods, he said yes. So, we left the trailhead and headed up the mountain together. The first half mile is all uphill, about 600 feet. Next, an up-and-down walk along the ridge that forms the Virginia and West Virginia border. Finally, the last quarter of a mile is all uphill, about 200 feet.

The 97-degree heat, the incline, and the 35 pounds on my back all made this a brutal hike. We made it, but to be honest, it took me several hours to recover. While recovering, we set up our tarps to sleep under and cooked dinner. After dinner we had an enjoyable campfire with some “deep thoughts” conversation.

Who was I trying to convince, “Yes, I CAN do this again”? Will, who is a strong twentysomething? You, who are reading this blog? Myself? The Universe? All the above?

A surprise test

Hank & Will, on the way down from the Big Schloss

It is not just my bladder cancer but my age that thrusts this question upon me. I will NOT be able to do this forever. Stroke, heart failure, or cancer could disable or kill me. Did I just take my last backpacking trip? Perhaps.

I don’t want to make this sound morbid. Au contraire, this is a moment to be thankful for all those wilderness outings, particularly for this most recent one.

Before returning to Arlington, Will and I stopped for breakfast at a diner on Route 11 in Woodstock, Virginia. I congratulated him over coffee, eggs, sausage, biscuits, and grits. “Will, you passed the test. You can marry my daughter.”

Surprised, he said, “TEST? I didn’t know this backpacking trip was a test!”

Oh yeah. It was. For both of us.

[NOTE: I did a short video while backpacking, talking all this. CLICK HERE]

__________________

Author Chaplain Hank Dunn, MDiv, has sold over 4 million copies of his books Hard Choices for Loving People and Light in the Shadows (also available on Amazon).

Follow Hank: LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube

A Cave, A Deathbed, and “How You Made Them Feel”

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“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” —Maya Angelou

1975 – Vineville Baptist, Macon, GA, youth group on retreat at Toccoa, GA. Photo by Hank Dunn

My theory about what matters most in the ministry is based directly on Angelou’s quote: It wasn’t so much what I said or did during my 50 years in the ministry. It was more about that certain “something” that made the people I worked with feel a particular way.

I was a youth minister for the first five years after seminary. I loved the work and loved “my kids.” We keep in touch in a Facebook group. I asked the group about our ministry and the Angelou quote.

Interestingly, a few noted specific things I said or some teaching from the books we read. Okay, so maybe people DO remember the things you say. One fellow, who eventually became a teacher and hospice chaplain, commented, “I don’t see it as an either/or but a combination.”

1977 – High school student on a backpacking trip into the Shining Rock Wilderness, NC. Photo by Hank Dunn

Others confirmed my theory that how people felt was most important. Another one of my kids (who also went into the ministry and travels the world training substance abuse counselors) commented:

“Absolutely. Experiences of pleasure, pain, joy, and shame have the biggest impact on the wiring of our brains and, therefore, how our souls interpret and interact with the world. Hank, you created a safe space where we could experience the joy of God and His love for us in nature, community, and individually.”

Sitting alone in a dark cave

I would sometimes take the teenagers into the wilderness as a place of ministry. We rafted on the Chattooga River, where the movie Deliverance was shot. We backpacked all over the north Georgia and western North Carolina mountains. We paddled and camped for three days in the Okefenokee Swamp. And, my favorite, we explored caves.

Part of every caving experience always included time for silent introspection. I would separate the kids along a passageway, take their lights, and have them sit alone in the darkness for 30 minutes. Recently, a participant on one of those trips shared with me the journal he kept at the time. The now-retired pharmacist wrote in 1975:

“I was really nervous before entering the cave. I never really liked the idea from the start. But when all lights were put out, I felt one of the greatest feelings of inner peacefulness and calm.”

1977 – “The Squeeze” in Johnson Crook Cave, AL. Photo by Hank Dunn

Here’s part of a report I wrote about another caving trip with junior high kids, also in 1975:

“There was one girl who was very much afraid to sit alone. I sat her down at the end of the line, where I would be close to her. After approximately five minutes in the dark, she began crying and eventually called me. I went to her, comforted her, told her I was near, and asked her to continue to sit, think, and pray as she remained in her place. She calmed down and completed the half-hour in darkness. She later revealed that it was not so much that she was afraid of the darkness but afraid to face up some of the own things in her life.”

“…people will never forget how you made them feel.”

A deathbed and the gift of presence

1990 – Fairfax Nursing Center. Photo by Hank Dunn

Fast forward 25 years, when I was a hospice chaplain. I was called to the home of a woman dying of cancer. I had made several attempts to schedule a time to see her and her family, but they were always busy and put off letting me in. Now, she was in her last hours. It was time to let the chaplain in.

When I arrived, a family friend sat with me in the living room and explained what was happening. We then went into the bedroom where the woman lay dying. Her husband sat beside her, and a nurse was not far away. I said very few words. There was little to say. I asked the husband if I could offer a prayer. He said, “Please do.” I finished my prayer, and he asked, “Can we say the Lord’s Prayer?” “Of course,” I replied, and we all prayed.

I left the bedside, and the friend followed me to the living room. I stopped to say goodbye, and this woman threw her arms around me, hugged my neck, and said, “You are so wonderful. That is just what we needed.” My first thought was, “Boy, is this job easy.” Anyone who could recite the Lord’s Prayer could have done what I did in that room. But then, I was so grateful to be invited into this moment in this family’s life.

I think Maya Angelou and I are on to something. People always remember how you made them feel.

________________________

Chaplain Hank Dunn is the author of Hard Choices for Loving People: CPR, Feeding Tubes, Palliative Care, Comfort Measures and the Patient with a Serious Illness and Light in the Shadows. Together, they have sold over 4 million copies. You can purchase his books at hankdunn.com or on Amazon.

“Grace” From Prehistory to Today

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“All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us, and the change is painful.” Flannery O’Connor

“Grace is always available to us, only we are not always ready to receive it.” Kabir Helminski, The Knowing Heart: A Sufi Path of Transformation

Photo by NEOM on Unsplash

“Grace” found in the wilderness

How did early humans sense the world they inhabited?

I have spent hundreds of nights sleeping in the wilderness. I have bedded down in caves, on mountaintops, on beaches, in the woods, on platforms in swamps, on riverbanks, and on prairie grasslands where the buffalo roam. I have had to narrow down my equipment to essentials I can carry on my back or in my kayak. I have had a few near misses with disaster that left me grateful just to be alive. But more often, I am incredibly moved by the beauty surrounding me — or rather, the beauty that I am immersed in.

1999— Hank on Mr. Democrat, Colorado

In 1999, at 9 AM on a September morning, after hours of climbing, I had reached the summit of the 14,148-foot Mt. Democrat in Colorado. I was alone. I wrote the following about this moment:

“I stood alone, drinking in the vastness of the alpine scene before me. I stood alone and thought there is nothing in my life that challenges me so physically — pushes my endurance and determination. I stood alone, knowing I receive more nourishment for my soul in the out-of-doors than any other place I could stand. I stood alone and felt a joy come up from inside of me. And the words that came out were, ‘Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus, for my life. Thank you for this wonderful world. This wonderful world.’”

To sum up these thoughts, I was overwhelmed by GRACE.

Did early humans have a similar sense of wonder and gratitude?

1976— Sleeping in a cave, Alabama

I may spend an inordinate amount of time contemplating the early hominids’ transition from lower animals into modern humans or homo sapiens. I even made a two-minute video while kayaking on a lake, pondering whether ancient humans thought the universe was to be feared or grace-filled.

I say “inordinate” because it is what it is. Or rather, we are what we are — thinking beings who walk upright, possess an opposable thumb, know we will die, etc. Why waste intellectual energy on something that happened hundreds of thousands or millions of years ago?

Yet I can’t help imagining our early ancestors had a sense of gratitude. I can imagine they were taken by the beauty of the natural world, not unlike how a beautiful sunset moves us today. I can imagine them being grateful for the bounty of the earth that sustained them, whether it was for the fruits and nuts hanging on trees or the small game near their dwellings.

Did they experience the world as I did on Mt. Democrat? Did they marvel at the gift of a newborn baby? What did they feel when a tree fell to the ground, just missing where they stood? Were they grateful to be alive, thankful they were granted grace?

But, perhaps, early human creative minds didn’t stop at just feeling grateful. Maybe we asked questions. Why was I not killed? How did I receive bounty from the earth? One possibility we came up with was there must be Someone responsible for our good fortune — Someone GREATER than us but sort of like us.

Why are we alive in the first place? How are we surviving so much that could kill us? “God” was our answer.

God or no God, grace abounds

Try this thought experiment: Suspend your traditional religious beliefs for a few moments and contemplate what drove our species to start thinking about God. Without the religious explanation, we might conclude that our ancestors did not believe in God. Heck, at one point, they did not even know they existed in the sense that humans are now self-aware.

Believers will say, “Those early humans were just becoming aware of the God who started it all ‘In the beginning.’” That may well be. But God or no God, grace abounds — then and now.

“Amazing Grace” sung by all

2023— Sipsey Wilderness, Alabama

A curious phenomenon in our time is the popularity of the hymn “Amazing Grace.” Secular nonbelievers and devout Christians can sing the words and be moved. Written in 1779 by John Newton, a former captain of slave ships who would become an abolitionist, the song speaks of “grace that saved.”

Interestingly, “God” or the “Lord” is not mentioned until the fourth verse. It is grace that saves, as we see in the second verse of the hymn:

Thro’ many dangers, toils, and snares, I have already come;

‘Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, And grace will lead me home.

No wonder the song has such widespread appeal. Grace is universal. Some say that grace comes from God. For others, grace comes from simply being part of this wonderful world. Grace is present either way. My theory, in summary, is that humans started considering the existence of GOD to explain the GRACE of life itself.

(Cover Photo by NEOM on Unsplash)

________________________

Chaplain Hank Dunn is the author of Hard Choices for Loving People: CPR, Feeding Tubes, Palliative Care, Comfort Measures and the Patient with a Serious Illness and Light in the Shadows. Together, they have sold over 4 million copies. You can purchase his books at hankdunn.com or on Amazon.

Don’t Tell Me, “God protected you!”

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Morning paddle the day before the disaster.

I had a nearly fatal accident last week. In the end, I just got soaked from a capsize of my kayak and lost some items. I thank God I am alive. After reading my story, some very well-meaning people may say, “God protected you!” Being a very devout man and former healthcare chaplain…that is the LAST thing I’d want to hear.

Setting the stage for disaster

Access to take-out through high water

I took advantage of a break in my schedule, and several good weather days ahead, to go camping, kayaking, and biking. I was off to a new place for me, Bogue Chitto State Park in Louisiana, not far from the Gulf Coast. The park stretches out over several miles of the Bogue Chitto River.

The river was at flood stage, and moving very fast. I scouted it out for two days and estimated that it would take me an hour to paddle from the put-in to the take-out. The only unknown was what exactly the take-out would look like.

I took two trips there to assess it, by car and by bike. I could see the river, but I couldn’t see the riverbank where I had to take out because of the high water. So, I dropped a pin on the map on my phone so I’d know when to look for it and set off to start the paddle.

Disaster strikes

Pleasant, sunny break on sandbar on Bogue Chitto River, LA

It was a sunny but cool day. I had no problem navigating the high, swift water, and even took a pleasant break on a sandbar.

As I approached the take-out and got closer to the bank, the strong current slammed me sideways into a downed tree and I flipped over and went totally under. I was in my sit-on-top kayak so there was no popping back upright. There was also no righting the kayak because I have no idea how to do an Eskimo roll. Once I came above water again, I found my boat and paddle.

The next task was to get out of the fast-moving water. Swimming with considerable effort, I found a fallen tree near the bank and was able to hold onto it. I spent several

At this place on the bank I made my self-rescue.

minutes, still in the water, just catching my breath. Was it two minutes or five minutes? Those few minutes also gave me time to think, “This is not a good situation.” When I left, I had told no one I was paddling and when to expect me back.

Again, with much effort, I swam in water that was mostly over my head, pulling my boat from tree to tree until I found solid ground. I knew I was close to the take-out, so I walked through the woods dragging my boat until I got to the road and eventually to the take-out. I had left my bike there earlier, and was able to ride the several miles back to my car.

Some things went right…

Fortunately, I did a lot of things right. I had on my life jacket, cinched up tight. It literally saved my life. I have always worn a fanny pack attached to my body for things I did not want to lose. In it was my car key.

I also had secured my phone in my life jacket. I had it out moments before to check for the take-out and set it on the floor of the kayak. Then I thought, “Maybe I ought to secure this puppy.” I am so glad I did.

Journal was baptized after the capsize.

Because of the cool temperature, I wore wet suit pants and socks. My t-shirt and turtleneck were synthetic material, which retains some warmth even when wet. I never felt cold, partly because I was working so hard.

My biggest regret, besides getting too close to that fallen tree, was I did not secure my cochlear implant processor. I lost it in the tumble. Fortunately, I had my old processor in the car as a backup. I lost my hat and a bottle of water, too.

I never had a fear that I would die. I could have, but my life jacket saved me. There was a moment when I got separated from my boat that I feared I would not be able to get back to it and be dragged down river to who knows where. Thankfully, I was able to use my paddle to pull the boat back toward me.

It’s “No problem”

Sitting at camp that night, I was glad to be alive and warm by the fire before me. I reviewed the events of the day. I thought about my friend, Wayne, who once reframed life’s challenges for me simply using the phrase, “No problem.”

For a situation in which you have no control: “No problem, there is nothing you can do about it.” For a situation in which you CAN do something about it: “No problem, take steps to figure it out.”

For me, this mishap was the latter, and I got through it with a series of “no problems.” Submerged in the water? No problem, get above water. Lost my boat? No problem, pull it back with my paddle. Need to avoid being swept downstream? No problem, swim to shore, relax, catch my breath. Got to get back to the car? No problem, get into the woods and find the road.

That’s not what I was thinking during the unfolding disaster, everything happened so fast I had no time to think of anything but the task at hand. But you know what they say about hindsight.

A real miracle

In my 45 years of paddling, I have never swamped. I always prepare for the possibility, thus the attached and secure fanny pack, the life jacket, and wet suit. But I also always thought it was a remote possibility, thus I did not secure my cochlear device. The next morning, I typed a long journal entry on my computer (my journal got soaked in the spill). Here is an excerpt:

“I have thought about what a disaster yesterday could have been. Had I been swept underwater and pinned in a sieve of the branches of the tree, I would have been dead in minutes. They might not have found my body for weeks as the flood waters receded. A similar accident took the life of a very skilled kayaker in Great Falls, Virginia in 2013. She got pinned under water and drowned.

“So many random, chance happenings prevented the capsize from becoming a disaster. When I first started paddling years ago I asked canoe guide, Ralph Shaw, why flood waters on whitewater rivers are so dangerous. After all, when the water rises all the rapids disappear. He said it is the volume of water that is the danger. That is what toppled me yesterday. Once the massive flood caught the edge of my boat, I was at the mercy of those waters….

“…I can hear some well-meaning people saying to me, ‘God protected you.’ I don’t want to hear that. The reason being is the terrible implication for all those who do drown in similar situations. Or what about hundreds of my patients who died while I was a nursing home and hospice chaplain? Following this reasoning, God did not protect them. It is a view that God picks winners and losers.

“I CAN say, ‘I thank God I am alive.’ But not that God saved me last week. I think of Cheryl Strayed, whom I wrote about in my blog, when she just said, ‘Thank you,’ at the end of her 1,000+ mile hike on the Pacific Crest Trail. I am simply glad to be alive every day.”

The miracle is not that I did not die last week — the real miracle it is that I am alive in the first place.

________________________________________

Chaplain Hank Dunn is the author of Hard Choices for Loving People: CPR, Feeding Tubes, Palliative Care, Comfort Measures and the Patient with a Serious Illness and Light in the Shadows. Together they have sold over 4 million copies. You can purchase his books at hankdunn.com or on Amazon.

Charlie and His Last Days in Hospice

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Katie meets Charlie on her 9th birthday

Charlie was born on October 4, 2007. The Feast of St. Francis. A bookend.

He recently came to his last days, loved, and surrounded by family. We didn’t use the word at the time, but he had a “hospice death.” My heart is so grateful.

Charlie grew with our family. He was a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, a gift to our daughter, Katie, for her ninth birthday. Good friends raved about their Cavalier and their breeder. We didn’t know what it took to own and raise a dog, and we were sucked in. It sounded so fun.

The breeder required that the adopting family have someone at home during the day. After making a “social work” home visit, she approved us. Of course, she received a hefty fee, which we gladly paid.

Charlie took to sleeping with humans

“Charlie” was not a very creative name, but it just seemed to fit a male King Charles Spaniel. At first, we crated him at night. After weeks of barking, he finally settled into his crate and his place at home. Until…

Our good friend, Roxanne, took Charlie in while we traveled. In her house, dogs slept with humans. Charlie would never again spend the night in a crate.

There is something very endearing about sleeping with a dog. Charlie would push up against my body or between my wife and me. He would snore and shift his position in the night.

Charlie joined Katie in Oxford her second year at Ole Miss, where he supported her during roommate issues and dating cycles. Their deep bond reached new depths. A dog just loves unconditionally.

In a freak accident, Charlie broke his hip and required surgery. Katie and Charlie made it through those days together, and forever one of his hind legs stuck out to the side. It was quite loveable to see when he sat on his haunches, one leg akimbo.

 

Charlie goes to Washington

High five on Katie’s graduation from college

After graduation, Katie moved to Arlington, Virginia, with Charlie and eventually took a job on Capitol Hill. Long days, especially when the Senate was in session, made keeping Charlie with her impossible. I picked him up last September, and we drove the 900 miles back to Oxford. He was the best road trip buddy. I will miss that.

Like I heard from so many of my hospice families, there were many signs that the end was approaching, but we didn’t think of it until after he died. Arthritis was setting in, and we gave him a daily pain pill. We noticed that he had become deaf. No more did he cock his head to the side when we spoke to him. (The way he used to do that was the best.)

Charlie made one last kayak trip to the swamp

Charlie’s last wilderness trip

I made one last kayak trip with Charlie in October. I featured him in my “Hank’s Deep Thoughts” video filmed that day. It was about how dogs practice mindfulness naturally when humans have to work at it. Charlie has hiked and camped and canoed and road tripped. This crisp October morning was his last wilderness outing.

The first of November, he had some serious intestinal issues, and we took him to the vet. With a change in diet and some meds, he stopped going outside hourly all night long. We thought we had settled into a “new normal.” But we were settling into his last days.

Katie was home for Thanksgiving, and all seemed normal. On Tuesday, November 30, it all changed. His eating and drinking fell off. He stopped walking. For days, I held him up as he took a few bites of food or sips of water. His legs would not support him to poop or pee. We knew this was the end.

A mother’s intuition brought Katie home for one last visit

On Sunday afternoon, my wife and I were pulling into the Walmart parking lot, and she blurted out, “Katie has to come home tonight.” It was a mother’s flash of insight for her soon-to-be grieving daughter. She called Katie and told her to get to National airport and get on a plane. I picked her up in Memphis with Charlie a few hours later. They slept together on our bedroom floor that night before she returned to D.C., Monday. In the car on the way to the Memphis airport, she “Snapped” a photo to friends, “my last photo I’ll ever take with my baby.” Indeed, it was.

 

 

Three days before dying a comfortable death at home

We kept Charlie comfortable. He neither ate nor drank all day. He could not stand. We called the vet, but he was out of town. It was just as well. We wanted to avoid anything that might make his passing painful, like needle sticks. This was hospice. Comfort care and just love. We were spared having to decide to put him down. He died peacefully on our bed Monday afternoon.

It was December 6, 2021. The Feast of St. Nicolas. A bookend.

 

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Chaplain Hank Dunn is the author of Hard Choices for Loving People: CPR, Feeding Tubes, Palliative Care, Comfort Measures and the Patient with a Serious Illness and Light in the Shadows. Together they have sold over 4 million copies. You can purchase his books at hankdunn.com or on Amazon.

 

Just Plain “Thank You” Period

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[NOTE: This is an update of a blog first published in 2013.]

Can we be overwhelmed with gratitude but have no need to thank anyone or anything?

This question came to me as I finished the last pages of Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed. This 2012 memoir was reviewed in The New York Times and made into a movie starring Reese Witherspoon in 2014.

She took her grief on a 1,100-mile backpacking trip

The story is about loss and backpacking, two abiding interests in my life. I’d probably write favorably of anyone who takes their grief on a 1,100-mile backpacking trip. Cheryl Strayed did and wrote about it.

Strayed has an abusive father, her beloved mother dies prematurely, and her stepfather and siblings later drift away. After Strayed’s destructive behavior ends her marriage and leads her to addiction, she decides to hike the Pacific Crest Trail, inexperienced and alone. She encounters the elements, animals, people, and her own demons and angels on her months-long journey.

I have never attempted long-distance backpacking. The most I have ever lasted was four nights. So, I only have a hint of what Strayed went through on her arduous journey. I met many through-hikers on the Appalachian Trail within a half-hour of my home in Virginia. The people I met on the AT had completed one thousand miles on their way to Maine, another thousand miles to the north. Strayed’s stories of the people she hikes with for a few days at a time ring true.

In the end, GRATITUDE was the feeling at her core

At bottom, Strayed’s story is about her spiritual journey to emotional wholeness from what was once the wreck of her life. She never portrayed herself as a religious person in any sense of the word. But, in the end, gratitude was the feeling at her core.

There are many moving passages in the book, but I was caught by one line on the next-to-last page of the book. Cheryl touches the bridge on the Columbia River, the site at the end of her journey. She walks back to an ice cream stand to buy herself a treat with the last two dollars she has to her name. She enjoys her ice cream, chatting with a lawyer from Portland who stops for ice cream, too. She says goodbye to him and

“I leaned my head back and closed my eyes against the sun as the tears I’d expected earlier at the bridge began to seep from my eyes. Thank you, I thought over and over again. Thank you. Not just for the long walk, but for everything I could feel finally gathered up inside of me; for everything the trail had taught me and everything I couldn’t yet know, though I felt it somehow already contained within me.”

Religious types thank God. Others thank a “higher power” or “the universe.” Strayed felt no need to tell us who the “you” was in her “thank you.” In my life-long quest to understand the spiritual journey, I have never encountered a simpler yet profound expression of gratitude for being a recipient of the graciousness of life. Most of the dying people I met in my 30 years as a chaplain had that same humility and gratitude.

Thank you.

Just “thank you,” period.

Cheryl Strayed ends her book acknowledging the truth I try to capture in my poem “Giving Up, Letting Go, and Letting Be” with the words,

“How wild it was, to let it be.”

Thank you,

Hank

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Chaplain Hank Dunn is the author of Hard Choices for Loving People: CPR, Feeding Tubes, Palliative Care, Comfort Measures and the Patient with a Serious Illness and Light in the Shadows. Together they have sold over 4 million copies. You can purchase his books at hankdunn.com or on Amazon.

 

The “Thin Places” Between the Physical and the Spiritual

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Do you ever notice how often people post photos of sunrises or sunsets on social media? “Inspiring,” they say. Or the religious types write, “Good morning from God.”

In my personal photo collection, I have scads of dawns and dusks. Sunrise in the swamp. Sunset from a mountaintop.

Then there was the sunrise etched in my memory when I found myself without a camera. I spent the night alone on a platform in the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina. It was chilly, so I braced myself against the cold covered up in my sleeping bag. At first light, I sensed something special was about to happen.

Indeed, it did. I sat up with a start and looked east. Moments before the sun inched above the distant ridge of mountains, a deep purple line separated the night sky from the ridgeline. It couldn’t have lasted more than a few minutes. I had never seen such a beautiful mountain dawn before. I haven’t since.

The “Thin Place” between physical and spiritual worlds

Iona Abbey, Scotland

That mountain was a “thin place.” The term is used to describe places of sacred power, where the separation between physical and spiritual worlds seems “thin.” There are sermons about thin places, like in the story of the Transfiguration.

In that story, Jesus shines with bright light on a mountaintop before his disciples. The mountain becomes a symbol of the meeting point between humans and God – between the physical and spiritual – with Jesus representing the connection between both worlds. Long before cameras or social media, Peter wanted to capture the moment and build three shrines to contain this heavenly appearance. Jesus would have none of it.

Thin places are most often associated with spiritual retreats, like the Scottish island of Iona, which I visited while on a Celtic Christianity pilgrimage. Being in places like this invites thoughts of things spiritual.

Hank’s “thin place” – campsite on The Big Schloss

There’s also a thin place, for me, on The Big Schloss, a rock outcrop on the Virginia-West Virginia border. I have probably spent thirty nights sleeping near the peak of this mountain, watching the sun rise and set. My children slept up there with me. We saw Halley’s comet there.

Even atheist author Sam Harris speaks of his own thin place experience. In his book, he describes how he was touched by a walk in Jesus’ footsteps. This happened on “an afternoon on the northwestern shore of the Sea of Galilee, atop the mount where Jesus is believed to have preached his most famous sermon,” Harris writes. “As I gazed at the surrounding hills, a feeling of peace came over me. It soon grew to a blissful stillness that silenced my thoughts. In an instant, the sense of being a separate self — an ‘I’ or a ‘me’ — vanished.” (Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion, p. 81)

“Thin Moments”

Photo by RODRIGO GONZALEZ on Unsplash

There are also “thin moments,” or moments in time that are transformed into a spiritual experience. In an earlier blog, I wrote about my sense of connection with others at the post office the first time I wore a mask inside. I quoted the monk (and sometimes hermit), Thomas Merton, and his sense of connection to all the busy shoppers at an intersection in Louisville.

Photo by Filip Mroz on Unsplash

More thin moments: Gazing into the face of an infant who is smiling for the first time. Walking outside at night and hearing an owl or a whip-poor-will. Listening to music that moves you. Then of course, there is always watching those sunsets and sunrises.

Thin moments could happen more often if we just paused long enough or weren’t so distracted or busy taking pictures to post. We don’t have to be at the top of a mountain or by the seashore. The promise from scripture is, “I am with you always.”

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Chaplain Hank Dunn is the author of Hard Choices for Loving People: CPR, Feeding Tubes, Palliative Care, Comfort Measures and the Patient with a Serious Illness and Light in the Shadows. Together they have sold over 4 million copies. You can purchase his books at hankdunn.com or on Amazon.

My Life At 100

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I made it to one hundred! 100. The Big One-Oh-Oh.

This is my 100th blog post. It took a while. I started blogging in 2011 and made six blog posts that year. For the first nine years, I only published 51.

From my very first blog post, May 11, 2011: “How to start a blog about end-of-life decisions? I have been professionally dealing with these issues for 27 years.… One thing for certain . . . the fact that patients and families often struggle with decisions about medical treatment at the end of life will not go away.”

(BTW, shout out to Kelly Brachle, of Quality of Life Publishing Co., who edits my ramblings into a coherent thought. And while I am shouting out, nothing leaves our home without the approval of my wife as she stands in for the “average reader” [when I showed her this post, she reminded me she is “above average”]. More than once, her suggestions have saved me some embarrassment.)

It’s all about the stories — family, friends, wilderness

Although I often stick to the theme of making end-of-life decisions, other topics get some attention. I share my own family’s experience with death and dying, like with my mom’s decline and death in “How did your mom feel about her dementia?” Grief is a repeated theme, like my recent post on the funeral ritual for my brother 42 years after he died.

I really try to tell stories, like the post about my friend who died with dementia. I wrote about our friendship since junior high and how we fished together in the years before his death. Occasionally, I share my adventures in the wilderness, like the one about my love of swamps.

I have been writing my whole adult life – before the days of the blog. A few of those older writings made it into the collection. I reprinted a story about riding my bicycle the length of the Outer Banks from a 1993 newsletter published by the nursing home where I was chaplain. For several years following a difficult time in my life, I sent letters (essays, really) to family and friends. In a 2014 post, I shared a piece I did in 1998 about my friend, mentor, and author, Elizabeth O’Connor.

Writing and videos for short attention spans

We have become a people with short attention spans, so I try to limit each post to about 500 words. I have even ventured into producing two-minute videos on various topics. Sometimes I’ll tell the same story in both formats. I did a blog about the lesson my father taught me about letting go in the blog “How to get to ‘It doesn’t Matter!’” I then did a YouTube video about the same story.

By the way, you can subscribe to my YouTube channel and look through my “Hank’s Deep Thoughts” playlist.

I have found that writing for others helps me think things through. I can clarify thoughts in my mind when I have to explain things in a way others can understand. So even if no one else reads these, I will keep on writing these blog posts.

Oops! I just passed 500 words. Bye!

“Find in Yourself What You Criticize in Another”

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Picture yourself at a restaurant with family and friends. The server places plates of delicious-looking food in front of everyone. Then one of your table companions says, “WAIT, WAIT, NOBODY EAT. I HAVE TO TAKE PICTURES.”

Then she takes out her phone, photographs each plate, and posts them to Instagram and/or Facebook.

When this happens to me, I think, “Oh my god! Can we just eat? Who cares what we are eating??”

The curse of social media: Every event is a photo op

Three years ago, we were living in Florida and my daughter was home on break. Out of the blue she says, “Hey. Let’s go for a walk on the beach.” I was so flattered that my college-aged kid would want to spend time with me. And as a bonus, I could get in a little cardio.

So, we drive over to Jupiter Island, park the car in the parking lot, and start walking north away from the crowds. After about a hundred yards she hands me her phone and asks, “Would you take my picture?”

Sure. No problem.

After about ten shots I hand her the phone. She looks at the photos and says, “Take some with more beach in the background.”

I do. Hand her the phone. She looks at them and says, “Maybe you should stand farther back.”

I do. My cardio op has now become my daughter’s photo op.

Photo ops in the swamp

In December, I posted a blog about my love of paddling in swamps. I really do love swamps. I was disappointed in my last trip to the Chakchiuma Swamp in nearby Grenada, Mississippi. This was back in the fall and we had gone through a dry spell. I could only access a small portion of the swamp for lack of water.

For a couple of months, I have been looking for several days of rain followed by a sunny morning. Last Wednesday was the day even though it was to be 32 degrees at my preferred launch time of sunrise.

It was all I had hoped for. Still water. The rising sun struggling to penetrate the fog. Quiet.

I had been thinking of a video I could make while paddling in this idyllic setting. I have been trying to increase my own social media presence by posting short videos on YouTube and Facebook. My plan was to condense that blog post by recording myself sharing my thoughts while paddling. So, I set up my tripod and mounted my phone.

I shot a video. And another. And another. And many more takes saying pretty much the same thing each time. Most were two minutes, but I shot five that were less than a minute so I could post one on Instagram. I shot seventeen videos in one hour and twenty-five minutes. I added up the times of each video and it came to a total twenty-seven minutes.

My many selves

Almost fifty years ago I was encouraged by an exercise in a book to discover my dark side, to look at my life and “Find in yourself what you criticize in another.”*

Bingo! I turned a wonderful time in the swamp into a photo op.

*From Our Many Selves: A Handbook of Self-Discovery by Elizabeth O’Connor, 1971. I wrote a previous blog about Elizabeth and the influence she had on my life.

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