Taking the pain out of dying with peace, love and understanding

Ruth Gledhill, The Times, Tuesday 11th December 2007

After a difficult life, the woman facing death in the hospice was too angry with God to contemplate a visit from the chaplain, the Rev Anton Muller. But the Anglican cleric was determined to find out why, in spite of the drugs and palliative care, the woman remained in great distress. 

He discovered that she was terrified that there would be no one to look after her dogs once she had gone. “In a sense, her dogs had become her spiritual support,” he said. He found someone to take them and the new carer brought the pets to visit her in the hospice. When she died she was at peace.

Mr Muller, 46, said: “People are often OK about leaving their spouses because they think humans can cope.” When they have to leave children and pets, however, they often struggle. 

As acting chairman of the Association of Hospice and Palliative Care Chaplains, Mr Muller, who is the spiritual care co-ordinator at Eden Valley Hospice in Carlisle, Cumbria, embraces the “total pain, total care” model of support envisioned by the founder of the hospice movement, Dame Cicely Saunders. He is helping to devise a University of Cumbria diploma in death and dying, using spiritual care as palliative care. 

But he is adamant that in most cases, before the spiritual, social and emotional needs of a patient can begin to be addressed, the physical pain must be reduced. “While physical pain management helps us to deal with the other aspects, every now and again it happens the other way around.” 

As an advocate of the spiritual but non-religious approach to dying, he does not wear a dog collar because it can get in the way of caring for those of different denominations and beliefs. 

“Often, a person in pain will ask why God is doing this to them. They might say, ‘I am not a believer, but if there is a God, why is he doing this?’. It is something people ask, irrespective of whether they have a belief.” 

In the children’s wing of the hospice, where parents and carers sit with little girls and boys at varying stages of terminal illness, such questions have particular poignancy. 

The question of why an omnipotent God permits suffering is one that Mr Muller cannot answer. “I have to plead ignorance. People cannot be fobbed off. The most helpful thing is to have experienced the stories of others who have gone through these things.”

He is helped by a team of volunteers who all have personal experience of bereavement. It is these personal stories that are of most help to the patients. 

Mr Muller, who held a senior post at Christian Aid before being ordained in 2000, will introduce the Christian approach to suffering and death only when he feels that it is appropriate. “What we can demonstrate is that the most critical thing in the ministry of Jesus was compassion based on understanding. First and foremost, what we do in a hospice setting is respond to human need with loving kindness.” 

Palliative care is expensive. Individual fundraising is what keeps the hospice movement going, in the main, aided by organisations such as Help the Hospices. Mr Muller adds: “We need to have a society where death is not viewed as a failure in hospital.”