Don't Look Away

It’s been almost a year since my dad died. The morning it happened, I walked into his hospital room, and he was whimpering. That sound is etched in my memory. We’d just made the decision to put him on hospice the day before. Apparently the meds weren’t enough—he was suffering.

I’d been on the other side of this equation with dozens of families. I knew how it worked, what was coming. We gave him more medication, and within the hour—breath by shorter breath—he drifted off. My mother and I stayed in the room, watching over him.

The nurses asked if we wanted to remain as they bathed him. Most people leave, they said. Not us.

We stood near as they washed his body—the same body that had coached little league, carried me on his shoulders, played Moonlight Sonata on our old piano. The same body that had aged, ached, and finally let go.

The nurses worked with tenderness and reverence. I took a photo of his body lying there. I took pictures of his hands—hands that had shaped me, that had gripped mine so many times. And now, especially in these weeks approaching the anniversary, I look at those photos often. Is that strange?

In those final hours, a mantra took hold of me. I said it to my wife. I repeated it to myself: Don’t look away.

This wasn’t my first time at a deathbed. I’ve been a religious leader and worked in hospitals. I’ve sat silently with people as they took their last breaths. Those moments—odd as it may sound—have often been among the most beautiful of my life.

But this was different. This was my dad. My decision to place him on hospice. My turn to face what I’d watched others endure—and what, I now know, can’t truly be understood until it’s yours.

There is meaning in choosing to stay. We live in a culture that flinches from suffering and averts its gaze from death. We medicalize it, institutionalize it, outsource it. But there is a quiet dignity in staying.

The nurses asked what kind of music to play while they tended to his body. They try, they said, to play what the person loved.

Without hesitation, I said: 80s hair metal. AC/DC. Def Leppard. Metallica. Mötley Crüe. And—Moonlight Sonata.

Because my father contained multitudes. He was both heavy metal and Beethoven. Rough edges and quiet depth.

And in that moment, curating the soundtrack of his transition felt like my final act of devotion.

What Hurts, What Heals

The Christian tradition, which shapes much of the Western world, centers on a man who suffers. He is hungry. He grieves. He doubts. He is betrayed and beaten. Executed by the most powerful empire of his time.

His body is taken down by those who love him, washed, prepared, honored. They do not look away.

This isn’t the triumphant superhero Jesus on a white horse. It’s the one who walks straight into death, abandonment, suffering. And from that descent, something new—something sacred—emerges.

In the Buddhist tradition, the first of the Four Noble Truths is that life is simply full of suffering. The word usually translated as “suffering” in Sanskrit is duhkha. I recently heard the teacher Joseph Goldstein describe the concept as, “the inevitability of unwanted experience.” It’s not personal. It’s just true.

The paradox is this: one of the paths to freedom from discomfort is to stop running from it.

These aren’t just metaphors for dramatic moments like death or despair. They’re wisdom for the thousand tiny stings of an ordinary day. The unanswered text. The self-doubt. The traffic jam. The quiet ache you can’t quite name.

We move fast past these things. We scroll, soothe, numb. But if we always distract ourselves, we miss the whisper beneath the discomfort. The data. The teacher. The life itself.

Because here’s the thing: when we pay attention to pain—our fear, our uncertainty, our sadness—it often softens.

Scientific studies back this up. One from Wake Forest found that mindfulness meditation reduced the intensity of pain by 27%—and its emotional weight by 44%. More than even some powerful drugs or placebos.

When we focus—really focus—on what hurts, it often hurts less. Or it starts to carry a different kind of weight. A meaningful one.

So if that’s true for physical pain, might it also be true for the pain of living? The pain of loss? Of uncertainty?

What do we miss when we look away?

In a culture where attention is rare and time always feels short, it’s counterintuitive to spend even a sliver of it sitting with what hurts. But upside-down wisdom is often the truest kind.

A few months after my father died, my wife’s father passed too. We walked into another quiet room. His body now frail. His breath thin. Life fading.

And the next day, facing the new stillness, she said it back to me: Don’t look away.

She was right. That’s where the meaning is. In the moment that stings. In the place that aches. In the awkward silence, the bittersweet goodbye, the quiet, defiant choice to stay.

I only got to help my dad suffer less because I was there to hear the whimper. I only saw the tenderness of strangers washing his body because I didn’t leave the room.

I’m guessing you’re a little like me—that you spend time and energy trying to avoid or quiet the uncomfortable stuff. The inevitability of unwanted experience.

But I would bet everything that your life (and mine) will be immensely better when we stop and ask what these moments might have to teach us.

This is on my mind a lot right now. It will be for a while.

Whatever life brings—don’t look away. I promise, it’s worth it.

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