The client was in great pain, feeling fretful and wouldn’t be up to communicating, Susan Swetnam was assured before she started administering a therapeutic massage.

Sure enough, the elderly woman kept her eyes closed and said nothing as Swetnam worked. When Swetnam finished, however, the woman opened her eyes and said in a strong voice, “God bless your hands dear!”

Swetnam, of Pocatello, captured such meaningful moments with massage therapy clients nearing the end of life in her ninth book “In the Mystery’s Shadow: Reflections on Caring for the Elderly and Dying.” Released in 2019 by Minnesota-based Liturgical Press, it recently won a National Catholic Book Award in the parish life category. The prestigious awards through the National Catholic Press Association recognize entries from throughout the U.S. and Canada.

Swetnam believes her massages connect with hospice patients on both an emotional and physical level, letting them know: “I’m not afraid to touch you. You’re not scary because you’re old and sick.” Often, clients with dementia simply want to hold her hand while she gently applies a warm touch to their shoulders with her free hand.

“My hand gets kissed a lot. I’ve had people who don’t speak speak to me,” said Swetnam, who sometimes hums tunes of songs while she works to relax such clients. “Music and touch together are sort of magical about bringing people back to grounding in this world.”

The first chapter of “In the Mystery’s Shadow” details how caregivers come to enter the profession. In Swetnam’s case, she discovered she had a knack for a gentle form of massage called comfort touch when she would seek to sooth her late husband Ford near the end of his life. The discipline involves identifying areas of pain and providing relief through light touch, holding and warming.

Swetnam, a former Idaho State University English professor, later began taking classes through ISU’s former massage therapy program to obtain a license.

Swetnam retired from ISU in 2013 as the only faculty member to win all three distinguished faculty awards, for teaching, research and service. The year after her retirement, she did a full-time clinical year in massage therapy at ISU, planning to specialize in helping people in bereavement.

She’s done the majority of her hospice massage work as an independent contractor for Heritage Health Services.

She initially intended to do a few massages per week. Soon, however, her Balsamroot Massage had more business than she could handle.

The pursuit has helped Swetnam, who is 70, become less apprehensive about old age and dying and less embarrassed to be emotional. She’s found people come to terms with their own mortality in very different ways. Some become bitter; others are overwhelmed and lose their energy. Many are terrified.

There are also many who maintain a good sense of humor and manage acceptance — like one of Swetnam’s older clients, who is the mother of her good friend. The favorite client started a book club shortly after moving into an assisted living center. When students come from the Pocatello Community Charter School to read books with the residents of her facility, the woman takes it upon herself to recruit participants, knocking on doors and shouting, “The children are here!”

Swetnam marvels at “the hospitality even very sick people can have and the graciousness they show toward visitors.”

“A lot of people are afraid of old people,” Swetnam said. “In a way, maybe I’m writing to the young me or something: ‘Don’t be afraid of this.’ What I’d really like to do is to encourage more people to get involved in working with the elderly and dying.”

Swetnam said “In the Mystery’s Shadow” was the most difficult of all of the books she’s authored to write, involving considerable research and narratives from her own experiences and relationships with clients. She pored through scientific literature on touch and dementia, she referenced scientific studies and she drew from books on aging and spirituality. She also researched what Catholic popes, saints and Mother Theresa had to say about aging and dying.

Other chapters in the book cover topics such as age and our culture, topics in elder care and forging relationships with people who come from different backgrounds.

Early in 2021, Swetnam plans to release the first book in a three-part series on seasonal reflections associated with daily church devotionals. She’ll include about 50 entries in the first book, each containing about 400 words, focused on the Easter season.