What Are the Most Loving Moments of Your Life?

Dear Editor:

One of the many beauties of hospice care is its focus on the whole person; pain is addressed alongside psychological, social, and spiritual concerns. As a psychologist in hospice care, I get the privilege of creating legacy documents for patients and their families. The work is termed Dignity Therapy, and involves interviewing patients about the most important aspects of their lives. ¹ In the interviews patients are asked questions such as, “What do you feel most proud of?” or “What lessons have you learned in life that you might wish to pass along?”

At this point I have interviewed over 120 patients, and a few years ago a bright-eyed medical student and I spent an entire summer meticulously combing through the life stories we had gathered. It felt like an archaeological expedition; we spent countless hours reading stories and delicately tallying the most frequent elements in each. ²

What did we discover? Love. Yes, love.

In fact, we found that 100% of the stories exploded with love. It did not matter whether the patients were young, old, male, female, Catholic, or Hindu. All of the people who shared their life stories found it vital to discuss love, and in particular, powerfully recounted some of their smallest acts or “micromoments” of love.

This was a particularly intriguing finding because no question in the Dignity Therapy interview specifically asked about love. It was as though love had emerged spontaneously, like a flower growing on the side of the freeway, one determined to blossom even if no one paid attention or even bothered to water it.

Perhaps this finding does not surprise you. Perhaps you saw the results of the first Meaning-Centered Group Psychotherapy which showed that every man put “love at the top of the list of sources of meaning.” ³ Or perhaps you read the recent book Love 2.0, by a researcher who described not only the pervasive need for love, but detailed how micromoments of love can change our very biochemistry and increase well-being. ⁴

“What does this all mean?” my medical student asked. Although I wanted to be a consummate expert in human behavior with a sage answer, instead I heard only a simple “I don't know” come spilling out of my mouth.

What does this mean for hospice care? Could we actually help our patients by asking about the love they have experienced and allowing them to recount those stories? We ask about pain in penetrating detail and do so on a daily or perhaps hourly basis. What would happen if end-of-life care incorporated a more formalized discussion of love and its defining moments?

At least for our research team, a new goal has emerged—to dig deeper into the power of love and give it a greater voice for hospice patients. We don't yet know the results of these endeavors, but we are determined to humbly begin by asking:

What are the most loving moments of your life?