The apocalypse of dying

When we speak in theological terms about a cataclysmic event in our lives, we might turn to the language of apocalypse, that particular kind of unveiling that manifests an overwhelming awareness of a previous hiddenness. But apocalypse is not merely an upheaval that confounds and stretches our imagination, perception, and understanding. In periods of absolute crisis, such as the end-time of a person’s life, there exists the very real experience of shock in relation to the mundane and the ordinary. We cannot prepare ourselves for an apocalypse. What we imagine could be revealed is never as horrifying as what is revealed.

In this collection of fictional stories and theological prose reflections, Matthew Holmes and Thomas R. Gaulke frame the process and experience of death and dying within that signature event of apocalypse, the last battle, Armageddon. The fictional stories, which draw from their real-life experiences as pastors and chaplains (Holmes also worked as an EMT), spit us into the visceral, unrelenting body horror of end-of-life care. Each chapter, rendered in grotesque detail, is its own battle to end all battles, and the belligerents include infection, negligence, institutions, nurses, and finally, death. God is conspicuously absent. In fact, there is only one (ineffective) chaplain in the whole volume. The reader stands mutely as the uncomfortable witness.

Each story is as traumatic as the next, though some slide toward cartoonish stereotypes. A grandfather entering a deceptively perfect assisted living facility. A wealthy woman who develops a lethal bedsore. A near-comatose woman who can only cry for help. An obese, cancer-ridden mother with an amputated foot. The reader quickly realizes that bodies are very wet and painfully alive as they die, before they turn to dust. Every episode is rife with failure, not just of the human body but of human compassion and institutional competence. At times it is physically difficult not to wince and look away from the page.