Ars Amandi – Ars Moriendi

Years ago Michael Kearney urged us to consider the risk of Palliative Medicine becoming "just another specialty." The aim of the very different practice of Palliative Care is certainly unique in its calling for the practitioners to be a people of compassion towards the dying person.

The very notion of care summons up the reality of love which is the essence of compassion.

This call for compassion summons all involved in that care to love the dying patient to the point of identifying with the person's experience. Our concern must be for addressing the most intimate needs of the whole person.
The word care is part of any definition of love. Love needs to be understood as a function of the will, defined as "The active care and concern for the welfare and growth to wholeness of the person." (Keogh 1975) or "The will to extend oneself for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth." (M. Scott Peck).

Palliative care means far more than the management of the patient's physical pain and comfort.

This is an extraordinary call to all those people comprising the palliative care team. Death is the most profound of mysteries. There are no experts from whom to learn. The experts have gone beyond the experience, and are no longer available.

Our work with terminally ill patients over forty years required that we look to finding a way to answer that call by daring to venture into the realm of the transcendent, risking the uncertain. The practice of the art of loving belongs, of course, in the realm of mystery.

The dignity  of the dying person urges us to compassion and to the enhancement of the nobility of the role of palliative care.

Further information is available at the Dying at Home website: www.dyingathome.org
9319 ARS ARMANDI - ARS MORIENDI (173kb pdf)