{"id":102,"date":"2014-06-24T15:50:40","date_gmt":"2014-06-24T15:50:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amysandermontanez.com\/?p=102"},"modified":"2014-06-24T15:50:40","modified_gmt":"2014-06-24T15:50:40","slug":"ending-well","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.amysandermontanez.com\/ending-well\/","title":{"rendered":"Ending Well"},"content":{"rendered":"

Posted by AmySanderMontanez at 3\/15\/2012 8:02 AM<\/a> | Add Comment<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve had so many endings in the past few years,\u201d my therapist said to me after I shared a disturbing dream with her.\u00a0 Oh yes, I thought, and many more to come.\u00a0 I had already been thinking about the ways my life was transitioning, and having that validated made the emotional roller coaster ride a little easier.<\/p>\n

Her insight reminded me of a past Christmas party where the talk turned toward aging parents, death, our own aging, retirement, and our desire to \u201cend well\u201d.\u00a0 We laughingly tossed around the idea that we should all have a hand-picked committee, people who loved us and would be in charge of helping us end well, whatever that would look like.\u00a0 Ending well, it seemed, was an important theme to all.\u00a0 Not just our ending in death, but in life\u2019s circumstances.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy all of this energy about ending well?\u201d I\u2019ve been asking myself.\u00a0 And then I realized that too many things in the past few years have not ended well.\u00a0 There are programs and ministries I\u2019ve been a part of that did not end well.\u00a0 People were kept in the dark.\u00a0 Gossip started.\u00a0 Anxiety increased.\u00a0 Creativity decreased.\u00a0 A program can die a slow, painful death just like a person can.\u00a0 It\u2019s awful.\u00a0 Surely there\u2019s another way, I keep thinking.<\/p>\n

People I have loved and cared about have not \u201cended well\u201d.\u00a0 There have been firings, law suits, and betrayals. Others have stayed somewhere too long, suffering a slow death while colleagues whispered at the water cooler about what could be done to make it go faster.\u00a0 Still others lost their edge and began making mistakes.\u00a0 It seemed there was no trusted \u201ccommittee\u201d to look with compassion and kindness and to help a person end well, to end with dignity and respect in tact.<\/p>\n

The marriages of people I have loved have had to end.\u00a0 Some of them ended better than others.\u00a0 Divorces can be as unsuccessful as marriages.\u00a0 The bitter, antagonistic, unconscious marriage just becomes the bitter, antagonistic, unconscious divorce.\u00a0 Other marriages end with compassion and dignity, without a need to control or destroy the other.\u00a0 With a willingness to act if not out of love at least out of respect and dignity, even a marriage can end well, if that can be an important part of the agenda.<\/p>\n

While our Christmas party musings were filled with laughter and irony, it seems there was a good bit of helpful truth in those ideas. The paradox, it seems, is that we don\u2019t always have control over how we end.\u00a0 And we do.\u00a0 My years of watching endings of all kinds tell me that we often end the way we live. The actual ending, the event itself, may be awful; AND, we might just respond to that ending in exactly the same way that we live our life.\u00a0 One of the keys, then, to ending well, is to live the way we want to end.\u00a0 If you live creatively and in community, you might be able to end creatively and in community.\u00a0 If you live isolated and mistrusting, you might end isolated and mistrusted.\u00a0 If you are steadfast and faithful, your ending might be steady and anchored.\u00a0 If you \u201cdo justice, love mercy, and walk kindly with the Lord\u201d you might end justly, mercifully, and kindly.\u00a0 If you practice life in a state of denial, you might end in the same state. Sometimes it is only time that reveals the ultimate character of the ending.\u00a0 What is done \u201cto you\u201d should not determine how you end.\u00a0 Your response to that and the unfolding of that response over time often does.<\/p>\n

For me, February is a month filled with the anniversaries of many endings.\u00a0 Today I am remembering my mother\u2019s last days in February, eleven years ago.\u00a0 She made a conscious decision not to receive the chemotherapy that would make her ending harsh, that would make her inevitable, impending death a burden on the family.\u00a0 She allowed us to care for her and be with her and love her right through to her final passing.\u00a0 When she died the entire family was holding hands around her praying for a peaceful and swift end.\u00a0 She ended the way she lived.\u00a0 Selflessly.\u00a0 Not asking for much.\u00a0 Maybe not asking for enough.<\/p>\n

All of this in no way is meant to sound like an illusion of control.\u00a0 More like a hope that our integrity in life matters.\u00a0 That what we do day to day matters.\u00a0 That no matter what happens or is done \u201cto us\u201d, our response to life\u2019s events make a difference.\u00a0 That who we are and how we are is, in the end, what really matters.<\/p>\n

Amy Sander Montanez, D.Min.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Posted by AmySanderMontanez at 3\/15\/2012 8:02 AM | Add Comment \u201cYou\u2019ve had so many endings in the past few years,\u201d my therapist said to me after I shared a disturbing dream with her.\u00a0 Oh yes, I thought, and many more to come.\u00a0 I had already been thinking about the ways my life was transitioning, and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"\nEnding Well - Amy Sander Montanez<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.amysandermontanez.com\/ending-well\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ending Well - Amy Sander Montanez\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Posted by AmySanderMontanez at 3\/15\/2012 8:02 AM | Add Comment \u201cYou\u2019ve had so many endings in the past few years,\u201d my therapist said to me after I shared a disturbing dream with her.\u00a0 Oh yes, I thought, and many more to come.\u00a0 I had already been thinking about the ways my life was transitioning, and…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.amysandermontanez.com\/ending-well\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Amy Sander Montanez\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-06-24T15:50:40+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"ASM62742\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"ASM62742\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.amysandermontanez.com\/ending-well\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.amysandermontanez.com\/ending-well\/\",\"name\":\"Ending Well - 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