I was sitting up tonight unable to sleep and I stumbled on a lovely video about a 92-year-old named Colin Apelt on the ABC website. For the last two decades he’s been serving drinks in the palliative care unit in St Vincent’s Private Hospital in Brisbane.*

The short video showed him preparing his serving tray, greeting those in palliative care, revealed their joy in seeing him and there were a couple of questions posed at the end. The soundtrack was jaunty upbeat jazz.

Watch it here.

It was really a lovely video, revealing Colin’s motive – his wife, it seems was in palliative care and he found it helpful. And so, he wanted to help. What a lovely guy.

It was a lovely video but also utterly empty. The ABC link gives away what this video is all about: QLD happy hour palliative care (plus Colin’s name and the hospital name.) Pause on that for a moment. Here is a man who has been caring for dying people constantly for 20 years. And the focus of the story? Happy hour.

I would have had so many questions for him. What are the different ways you’ve seen people cope with death and facing death? What seems to bring people comfort as they face death? What do you think about death? What has brought you comfort as you think about your own mortality?

Here was an opportunity for the reporters to explore the greatest questions faced by humanity: what happens when you die? How can you face death with courage and fortitude?

Instead, we got upbeat jazz and a very careful avoidance of the topic of death. In the final moments of the video, Colin answers a question. He repeats it to the camera, ‘What has volunteering taught me about life?’

Notice the very careful avoidance of the topic of death. Colin volunteers among, walks with, cares for and supports, those facing death. But let’s not think about that. Let’s think about the only thing we can to avoid this topic of death: Life!

Is this people everywhere? Does everyone avoid the topic of death? Or is it only those of us living in the sun-drenched corner of SE Queensland?

Perhaps that’s why the answer Colin gives is right at the end of the video. Because in his answer – he talks about the reality we Australians are hell-bent on avoiding. Death. 

‘Well, I suppose giving brings a very great reward to the giver. The knowledge that I’ve given a certain amount of comfort and joy to patients who are at their final stages of life.’

There it is – death. Finally we’re talking about it. ‘Patients who are in their final stages of life. But we aren’t. That’s the end of the video.

I know this experience first-hand of avoiding death. Even when my son was in the palliative care unit in an amazing hospital, it was almost impossible to get doctors and nurses to explicitly talk about his impending death. We had to press them – how many days do you think he has to live? It broke our hearts to ask this question. But we wanted to prepare him for his death and that takes time. We wanted to point him again to the resurrection hope found in Jesus. He alone in the history of the world has offered a hope that pierces through death and then proven that hope by his own resurrection some 2000 years ago.

Death. Some of us may get a chance to reflect on death before it claims us. But for others, we’ll be so busy dying – with medical treatment - we won’t have time to consider death. And for others, death will strike us down as we are lunging forward in life. Sadly, no happy hour in a Queensland hospital will stop any of us from facing the reality of death.

*Edit - I said I’d been there visiting a dying friend. That was incorrect! I mixed it up with another hospital where I went to visit a dying friend.