A Tender Time Makes Great Tinder for the Last Flames of Life

Review by Carl Blumenthal
Brooklyn Meeting

My motto as an end-of-life midwife (“death doula”), who ferries people from the shore of life into the ocean of infinity, is “save the best for last.” 

Ideally, death should be “way open” rather than closed. Because every life and death is unique, my way of paying homage to Patricia M. Nesbitt and Kristin Camitta Zimet, of Baltimore Yearly Meeting, for writing A Tender Time: Quaker Voices on the End of Life, is to start at the end of the book and work backwards. Why?

Quakers, being a studious lot who tend to believe, like Descartes, that we think, therefore we are, may want to first mine the authors’ A Treasury of Resources, including queries for aging and dying well and for discerning a leading to die, checklists for survivors and the meeting’s roles, as well as considerations for laying the body down, plus an extensive annotated bibliography. The latter adds to the Quaker voices of the subtitle that Nesbitt and Zimet sprinkle throughout as inspiring epigraphs and other testimonies. 

The spoiler alert as the reader proceeds from chapter six to one is that Nesbitt and Zimet, palliative care nurse and EMT, respectively, among other preparatory roles, fully explicate the concentric circles of care needed from and for every one of us. Given that “walking the talk” is never easy, their empathetic prose helps the medicine go down. This backward gaze also means that the reader follows the authors from the outside in, with the meeting’s, F(f)riend’s, and family’s concerns preceding those of the individual, who gets the final say. 

“Chapter 6: Circles of Care: The Loving Meeting:” By offering an almost dizzying array of ways that we can give aging, dying, and death their due, the authors imply we can reinvigorate our meetings. 

“Chapter 5: Circles of Care: Friendship” can be a big “F” or a little “f” thing. It’s a delicate dance that we as individuals do because for the dying person and their family members, especially the caregiver, knowing where and when an outsider fits in is an open question. Suffice it to quote Maya Angelou, as Nesbitt and Zimet do: “Nobody, but nobody/ Can make it out here alone.” 

“Chapter 4: Circles of Care: The Primary Caregiver” describes a lifetime partner as the model, though it doesn’t exclude others from assuming the role. Given its weightiness, emphasis is on all the ways you can share the burden, as in the previous two chapters, and prepares you for witnessing death and grieving. Most of all, you learn to engage in “the ministry of presence.” 

“Chapter 3: Gifting the Future” is the “your money or your life” proposition. It can be material or spiritual. Feeding your progeny or the worms. Enuf said.

“Chapter 2: Reaching the End: Spirit-Led Dying” is a misnomer because this is all about the medical and legal ways of having your last wishes carried out. 

“Chapter 1: Completing Your Life: Spirit-Led Aging” is, in fact, the real McCoy. Here’s when the “tender time” of the book’s title is like “Love Supreme,” jazz great John Coltrane’s greatest tune. It evokes Jesus’ saying, “For wherever two or three of them are gathered, there I am.” 

Imagine Patricia Nesbitt and Kristin Zimet as camp counselors around a fire, but instead of telling spooky tales, they reassure us that it’s never too late to set our lives on a godly plane (and hand us the hard-earned tickets at the gate). 

“To Our Readers”: Here you will discover: “Dear Friends, We all eventually face that tender time when we come to grips with mortality. Why do we call it tender? The end of life is a time when you are exposed and newly vulnerable, as a green shoot is tender; but given forthright, gentle handling, you can open to growth…Tender comes from a root that means “to stretch, and this final stretch of life will surely stretch you (emphasis added).” 

NY Quarterly Meeting’s Concern for Quaker Living Group has been reading and discussing A Tender Time. Find out more at nycquakers.org/events