Recognising that her main reason for living these past forty years revolved around being of loving service to her children. I said to her:

You have convinced yourself that you are no longer of any use to your children. You think you’ll be an unwelcome burden in their lives, and it would be better for everybody if you died right now.
Dear Margaret, I know what a vital role you have played in nurturing and guiding each one of them into the wonderful people that they are right now. You have taught them so much, partly through your individual guidance but mostly through the good example you have set for them in how you’ve lived your life.

Now you have one last thing to teach them, the final gift of your mothering: to show them how to die. The example you set for your family as your body deteriorates will have a lasting impact on them. It will influence not only how they live the rest of their lives but also how they approach their own dying when that time comes.

Show them how to do it, Mother. Without realising it, they are waiting for you to show them how to die. And you’ll do it very well. All of your life’s wisdom and love will be poured into this final lesson. You are their mother, their mentor. Play your role well as best you can until the final curtain falls.

As I was speaking, Margaret’s face and eyes showed that she was leaving behind her abject melancholy. She sat up in bed with some of her old alertness and positivity and said with quiet conviction, “You are so right, Ron and Su. My work is not yet done. Now I have a good reason to live.” She bade us goodbye with a reflective smile.

Months later we heard our friend, Margaret’s son, advising a large audience on how important it was to have a clearly-defined reason for being here, living each day. He shared with them how his mother had turned her back on a deep depression to become vibrant and joy-filled during the last few weeks of her life. He said it was because she had a real meaning for being alive, to show her children how to die. She was now content with whatever came her way, and seemed to relish every single moment of her remaining days.

Another example of how important it is to create a sense of meaning in our lives is that of the well-known psychiatrist, Viktor Frankl, now deceased. Frankl spent three years in a Nazi concentration camp during World War 2. Amidst all of the starvation, brutality, disease and sheer horror, he observed that those who continued to survive did so by holding onto something which gave meaning to their lives. In contrast, even the strongest succumbed to despair and then died of typhoid or other illnesses if they could see no point in being alive.

For Frankl, his reason for living was the possibility – albeit remote – of seeing his beloved wife once again. For another it was to stay alive until the war was over so that he could testify to the world about the unspeakable crimes against humanity he was witnessing every day.

I also read separately of a remarkable Austrian woman, Marie Von Blum, who was full of love and joy even when she was being herded into the gas chamber that would end her life. Marie saw the lunacy and depravity surrounding her as an opportunity to quicken and deepen her Christian faith. She spoke of the most sadistic of the guards with great compassion, understanding that ‘those who are the hardest to love are the ones most in need of our love’.

Her example lifted the spirit of all those around her, even after she was no longer physically present. For Marie, the meaning underlying all of the senseless barbarity was so she could demonstrate that, like stars at night with no moon, the Christ spirit can shine even brighter when darkness abounds.

Viktor Frankl later published a book on his findings titled, ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’, and went on to develop Logotherapy which helps people find ways to give meaning to their lives. The surviving friends of Marie Von Blum later wrote a book about the shining example of someone who could make sense out of what seemed to be totally senseless.

The rewards which come from injecting meaning into our lives – even in the midst of our suffering – are seldom as immediate as in the story of Margaret told earlier, or as spontaneous as in Viktor Frankl and Marie Von Blum. Generally it requires the steady building of faith: that creating a reason for living will lessen the depth and heaviness of our depression. That is why it helps to read about Frankl, Von Blum, Winston Churchill, Tolstoy and others who held on to the flickering flame of meaning until it led them to freedom.

Don’t give up. Read as widely as you can until someone’s story strikes a chord with you. Then you too will have a flame to light the tiny path through the dark forest of your days.

You might like to check out a wonderful self-help website. It is www.beyondblue.org.au

Also there are some good ideas in the book by Dorothy Rowe, ‘Depression: The Way Out of Your Prison’ and in the one by David Burns, ‘Feeling Good: The New Mood Therapy’.

We trust that these few words on finding a meaning for living have been of some help to you.