TORONTO - Susan Morgan talks to people as they die. She is one of a very few palliative care chaplains on wheels.

Working for St. Elizabeth Health Care , Morgan visits palliative care patients in their homes all through York Region north of Toronto. Though there are plenty of agencies that offer home-based care, St. Elizabeth’s is perhaps the only one to include a chaplain in that range of care and to make a specialty of palliative care.

“When people are dying everything gets stripped away. There’s no small talk. You are left with the bare essentials,” Morgan told The Catholic Register. “Without exception they are my teachers. I bear witness to gratitude, flourishing growth, forgiveness, laughter.”

Morgan is not blind to the pain and loss felt on all sides of the story when she deals with dying patients. The dying have told her how they feel they’ve become nothing but a burden on their families and everyone around them. Not every member of every family stands around the deathbed with love and gratitude in their heart.

Some lives are full of disappointment, pain, division, even sin. Not every death is a gentle fade into a just reward. But as people face death, Morgan helps them to recover the good in their lives, to make things right. That can mean arranging for a priest to anoint them, delivering communion. It can also mean helping families to reconnect, forgive one another and understand their history together.

Obligations to the dying Persons who are dying should be provided with care, compassion and comfort, including: Appropriate medical care Pain and symptom management Social, emotional, spiritual and religious support Full information about their condition Opportunity to speak to a health care personnel A degree of privacy that ensures dignity and peace

A patient who brings tears to Morgan’s eyes as she recalls him died of Lou Gehrig’s disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis or ALS) at 48. He had been a professional soccer player, but as he died the money was mostly gone and one of his sons hadn’t spoken to him in years.

The man was unable to breathe without a hockey mask on his face and an oxygen tank attached. He had lost control of just about every muscle in his body. The next stage in the disease would mean losing his vocal chords — to be left as the isolated observer imprisoned in a broken body on a bed.

While he could still speak, Morgan transcribed letters he directed to each of his children and his wife. Propped up in a chair and struggling to breath, the man put heroic effort into blessing each of his children — including the wounded and angry son who would not speak with him.

“With his only breaths to his three children he gave only beautiful words of love — hopes and dreams for them,” said Morgan.

In the end, he died when the power went out during a storm. Without electricity, the oxygen failed. But like almost all the dying people Morgan ministers to, this man left his family with blessings and not curses.

When patients say they have become a burden, Morgan tells them: “You have become the occasion, the catalyst, the means for the rest of us to give the best of ourselves.”

A society that cuts itself off from the blessings and compassion of those who suffer — the blessings of the dying — loses something. For Morgan palliative care means “upholding the dignity of dying patients.” But of course their dignity is shared with all of us. Dignity does not pair well with isolation.

Michael Swan, The Catholic Register Michael Swan is Associate Editor of The Catholic Register. He is an award-winning writer and photographer and holds a Master of Arts degree from New York University.

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