What I chant when someone asks

As a hospice nurse I don't bring my practice into patients' rooms. That's a firm line for me. Their faith, their dying, their way.

But last week a woman I'll call June asked me, around two in the morning, whether I prayed. She'd been raised Methodist, hadn't been inside a church in fifty years, and didn't want the chaplain because 'he'll want me to say things.' She wanted something with no strings attached.

So I asked if I could offer her the words I say for myself every morning, and she said yes. I sat down, rested my hand near hers on the blanket (not on it; she didn't like to be touched), and said the metta phrases very slowly:

May you be filled with loving-kindness. May you be safe from inner and outer dangers. May you be well in body and mind. May you be at ease and happy.

She closed her eyes. After the third round she said, 'Do it for my son,' and gave me his name. Then her sister. Then the night nurse who'd been 'a bit sharp' with her. Then, quietly, 'And for you.'

We went around like that for maybe twenty minutes, adding people. I have sat thousands of hours on a cushion and I'm not sure I've ever practiced so well.

She died two days later, on a Thursday afternoon, with her son beside her. I wasn't on shift. When I heard, I washed the mugs in the break room slowly, the way my teacher taught me, and said the phrases one more time with her name at the front of the line.