A searchable, downloadable PDF of the original review appears below. Bridget Dickens attends St. Giles Presbyterian Church, Prince George, B.C.
Sightings in the Valley of the Shadow: Reflections on Dying. Balfour M. Mount.
The author established the first Palliative Care Centre in Montreal, and the book is a personal journey of his mother’s death. It is a most touching, sensitive and honest book on preparing to die, the final release in death, and the awful “hole” in our lives afterwards. It includes not only writing, but photographs, poems and most of all (for me) related Scriptures which I felt he was led to by the Holy Spirit. It is truly a Christian perspective on death and dying, and it shows us that even those with the deepest of faith have doubts and fears about the process of dying.
The feelings of the lady who is dying are those of a mother; one who for many years has been the care-giver in the family, now she is in need of love and care. Balfour sketches for us the beauty of her life in her role as “mother”, what a giving life that had been (!), and now she is receiving much.
Questions and doubts come into the picture, and threaded through it, comforting Scriptures and lives of faith found in the Bible.
How do we find meaning to life? How do we cope with ending of life – in its suddenness, or by inches – in Balfour’s context the pain of the “downhill slide”, his mother’s overwhelming fatigue and weakness? He talks of the need to strip off our masks – “no time for pretense”. He speaks of love, as Paul wrote in his letter to the Corinthians. “Do we ever learn to love, be open, accept (both others and ourselves).”
He addresses the need to look at “priorities”. Jacob and Esau were brought into the picture, where were their priorities? Where indeed are our own? Our need is for “treasure in Heaven”. It is so hard as we approach the end of the road if we realize our priorities have not been, and are not, right.
The author speaks of the joy of freedom, as the Lord alone can set us free; he also paints for us a vivid picture of the suffering of our Lord on the Cross, contrasted with the serenity and peace of his face as he appears after the Resurrection. “How many . . . have been sustained by You in their final days, how many, Lord, have known Your touch.”
Balfour reminds us of God’s promises: “release to captives, recovery of sight, liberty, good news . .. that you are here with us in this room – a suffering God sharing in our time of need, we are not alone.”
He writes of miracles – in the Bible, and how people feel today when prayer appears to go unanswered. But the lesson comes through once more. “God is with us in our pain. He is in the heart of suffering, His the greater load.”
The blessings of home care, the family, familiar surroundings, the message “It is all right.” “Home Care? – isolated from the swirling storm . . .” “It is the gift of time and space. Integration on the edge of eternity.”
The actual dying – of one who has sought to already “shrink her world to self, to suffering, to death, . . . the work of dying.”
He writes of the finality, the reality of the emptiness in the home, in ‘the Green Bathroom’ and the flood of childhood memories in which his mother was always there; the finality of interment, the mourning of their loss, and the presence of peace.
I would recommend this book to anyone involved with those suffering, or approaching death, and especially for palliative care-givers.