This past week a resident died during one of my day shifts. If you work in residential aged care, working among the dead and dying is hardly uncommon. What is rare, however, are deaths (onsite) during the day. Most often, people die at night during the early morning hours or at hospital after leaving the facility when their care is beyond the scope of the nursing staff.
Part of our role in chaplaincy is to be with the dead and their family once they have passed. I still remember sitting alone with my first dead person. Most chaplains say they remember their first time too. This man – I’ll call him Aaron – had died from liver disease. A life supported by alcohol made for a very difficult and, dare I say ‘ugly’, ending. The truth is, I was there at Aaron’s brothers request. The brother wanted someone to be with Aaron as he ran out to make some phone calls. The brother was so kind-hearted. A salt-of-the-earth guy who was Aaron’s carer for a time when the rest of the family could not.
I still remember the stillness of being in the room with Aaron once he had passed.
Nearly two years into the job and many more deaths, that stillness of a body no longer animated by breathing, pain, or distress now holds a sacredness that is hard to describe. Sometimes, pastoral care workers, priests, and chaplains are asked to fill that empty space with a prayer – something the deceased may have asked for on their end-of-life plan. Often though, the space is filled with cries, chatter, or relief from those who have sat beside them in the last hours and now are faced with loss and whatever is next.
This is all unavoidable. All created things have a beginning and an end.
Also, this past week, I spoke at a business person’s breakfast. You see, when I’m not working in end-of-life care, I am researching and teaching in my local university’s business school. The invite to speak at the breakfast came on account of some social posts around my upcoming book ‘Decenter Everything’. Mike, the guy who organises the breakfasts, gave me free rein to speak on whatever I wanted but said it would be helpful to discuss some of the findings from my doctoral studies on small business. I decided to talk about death. Not just because death was part of my chaplaincy work but because it is part of all created life – including business life.
I threw a few slides up on the big screen showing the attendees theory-based diagrams of business seasons and life-cycles. I followed them up with several slides showing diagrams of the seasons and life-cycles of a person’s lifespan and psycho-socio-spiritual growth. A monkey could pick the similarities in the charts. Aside from the titles and labels, all the lines, curves, and flow looked very similar. They all started at zero, went to a learning and launch stage, entered a growth phase, got to a maturity stage, and then had a decline and exit of sorts. I threw in some light-hearted jokes and stories but the evidence is clear:
One day, we will die.
And one day, Microsoft, Apple, Ford and every large, medium, or small business will die.
If death is guaranteed, and unavoidable, what then would wisdom do differently now? The answer to that question rarely comes easy because very few people speak of death and the end of things. As Ernest Becker outlined in his 1974 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, The Denial of Death, we in the West don’t like to talk about (or be near) death. I have a whole chapter about this in the new book – suffice to say that we lack basic wisdom and discernment when it comes to the decline of things, including the businesses we manage and work in. It would seem that many business people are simply unwilling to face the unavoidable truth that their enterprises, big or small, are in a season of decline – or simply failed to make it to maturity. According to a recent national Australian study, “Around 43% of small businesses failed to make a profit and 75% of small business owners take home less than the average wage.“ (Small Business Matters, 2024)
Now, there are many reasons to start, buy, or manage a business but everyone who does tells you it can be tough going. The statistics indicate that only 1-in-4 small business owners earn more than an average wage from their efforts. Am I suggesting all the strugglers should call it a day? No way. Nor do I think all the profitable owners should sell up. What I am suggesting, and what I suggested to the listeners at the breakfast, is that we must have necessary and honest discussions about the season a business is in, and the season we personally are in.
After the breakfast talk, a lady who works as a business broker asked to stay in touch. She shared that so many small business owners, mainly Boomers (born 1946 -1964) who have done very well with their small businesses – and are now tired and wanting to retire – needed to hear my talk. She went on to say that these people had all the houses, boats and toys etc., but couldn’t come to grips with exiting or selling their businesses. I was not surprise because social research suggests many Boomers attached a great deal of identity from their economic success – many attributing their success to their smarts, instead of complex favourable external forces (e.g. political, economic, social, technological etc).
My thoughts: These people should sell their functional businesses, at a reasonable price to the next generation, and spend their remaining days giving back (as volunteers, grandparents, carers etc.) firstly to the communities that fostered their wealth, and secondly to the younger generation whose taxes will be funding their pensions. Sure, enjoy the fruit of your labours but for goodness’ sake, you must divest of yourself and belongings – everyone will be happier for it!
Back to chaplaincy for a moment. You may not be surprised to hear that very few people who come into a 24-hour support residential aged-care facility are willing to discuss their end-of-life wishes. I mean, this is literally their last stop after a long life and they simply can’t talk about the end. However, those who have come to accept where they are and what is coming speak about it with sobriety and – dare I say – a sense of gratitude that makes them a delight to care for and be around. These older persons are oftentimes practised in what I have coined ‘decentric eldering’ – a term I unpack in the new book.
To wrap this up, it would seem that a possible combination of immaturity, denial, naivety and an inability to grieve well has robbed many from accepting that all things must end. This is a great loss and a symptom of the era we find ourselves in – humans living longer with more stuff than ever before at the world and future’s expense.
We pathologise grief.
We shame quitters.
We idolise health and wealth.
We believed the lie that life is an endless summer.
We refuse to grow up and then grow down.
I’ll close with a question: What necessary conversations are you avoiding that you need to have around the end of things?
David Tensen