So you can struggle in the water and be too stubborn to die, or you could just let go and be lifted to the sky.
Last month, my mother sat at a party drinking several gin and tonics, laughing with family and friends. This month, she can barely drink water. Her days are quickly coming to an end and I'm falling apart. My sister and I have been by her bedside 24-7, holding her hand and acting as her lifeline to the environment surrounding her. When we're there, she knows she's safe. If only that were true.
We chose not to tell her that the cancer she's been battling has gone to her brain. She once told me if that ever happened, to please make a call back east and arrange for a hitman to "take her out." My sister and I struggle with what's right and what's wrong. Do we let them put her on morphine and accelerate her death? Is that what she would want? I've had professionals tell me that it's wrong to withold from my mother the fact that she's dying. That she needs to make peace with it. She doesn't want to die. There is no peace. I will not let the last days of her life be filled with fear. Instead, the shaky words that come from her failing mind speak of going home, being outdoors, and traveling to New York. Let her have hope. If I were in her shoes, I would want to be flown to New York for one big party and then shot full of heroin. I don't want to know the truth. I prefer denial. It's less painful.
I return home each day for a few hours to find my voice mail full of messages from the many family and friends who adore my mother. With each call, I relive the horror that is my mother's life, or pending death. People attempt to offer comfort, but I find very little. They tell me she'll be in a better place, or it's God's will, or it was meant to be. I don't buy it. I want her here, with her family where she belongs. If this is meant to be and it is God's will, fuck him and the chariot he rode in on. Unlike the pastors, chaplains and priests who flood my mother's hospital room who see death as a beautiful experience, I hate death. It's permanent and it sucks.
My dear friend Lucia offered a few comforting words. She told me how my mother made an impact on everyone's life she touched and that her amazing grace will live on through us and others. She also told me that there is no good time to die. It's always too soon and we're never prepared. How true.
As I sit here at 4 a.m., typing while I should be sleeping, preparing myself for another day of watching my mother slip away, I wonder if I will ever find peace with all of this. Or will I become even more fearful of death or more cynical of life. My spirituality is quickly fading. I'm starting to see the idea of God and the afterlife as something human beings made up to offer them comfort at a time like this. It just isn't working for me.
Posted at June 16, 2003 4:53 AM
Comments
stay strong like i said, not just for you for you mom and the rest of your family.
my heart goes out to you and yours.
love ya toni. stay strong
No one can tell you how to handle this experience.
Whether or not I, or anyone else, might want to do things differently, you are the one who must choose how to go through this painful passage. All I can recommend, for what it's worth, is that you let yourself feel your feelings and then do whatever it is you think you need to do. Ruthless honesty with yourself will help you survive.
And screw the polyanna platitudes that people are mouthing. Sure, they mean well, but as you are learning they can be worse than nothing. Those people who will stand along side you as you rage and grieve... who will listen and not judge and offer their love and support... well, those people are true friends.
My mother knew she was dying, and if she was afraid she kept it to herself. (She was always sparing others anything negative in her own life ~ which was a problem all it's own.) For myself, I'm not afraid of death, I'm afraid of a very unpleasant process of dying.
Death puts conventional religion to the test. A lot of time, in my view, conventional or traditional religion fails pretty miserably. If we're lucky, though, the experience of being with the dying can open doors to a more personal, if unconventional, kind of spirituality. It did for me. Eventually, I found a way to integrate my new understanding back into a more traditional context... but only up to a point.
Anyway, sorry to hold forth. Your situation speaks to the deepest and most profound transition in my own life.
Praying for you and your mother...
I am 21 years old, and going through a very similar experience right now. My grandmother is on her way out. Cancer is a bitch. My grandmother was always energetic, and stubborn. She didn't need any help from anyone. One week she was outside shoveling snow like that stubborn old lady we all knew her for being. The next she was in the hospital and hasn't been the same since. Came out of no where. Hit her like a ton of bricks. Started in her chest, then traveled up into her brain. My family faced the same dilemas that you face. At first we didn't tell her, but eventually we did. Every visit gets harder and harder. Everytime I see her she is worse and worse. She is deathly skinny, she barely talks, and is bed ridden. She rarely recognizes who any visitors are until we tell her. It is so sad to see her like this. The doctors gave her a matter of weeks to live, however it has been months. I don't know if you can consider it living though. She just lays there in a daze most of the day. Barely enough strength to move her arm. She sees strange people/things, and talks jibberish. My family is riding the same emotional rollercoaster that you are. We would never wish for her to die, but these months of pointless suffering make us question why she should keep fighting death. We all have the same emotions about religion. My grandmother was very religious, and a priest came to the house the other day. I'm not a religious person, but he did a last rights type of service for her. He repeatedly said "The lord loves us all" yada yada yada.... All I could think of while he said this and as I looked at my dying grandmother was "This is love?".
Anyway, I guess I share this with you to let you know that you are not the only one. It kind of made me feel better to know that I'm not the only one having these feelings after I read your writings. Stay strong through this tough time. I wish you all the best.
Jared
My family went through something simular last year when my grandfather died.
He wanted to leave the hospital so badly but no one done anything to get him out hoping and thinking the hospital was better for him.
The hospital ended up having to restrain my grandpa because he was fighting to leave hitting nurses and such and after being restrained he just gave up
It was finally the night before he past on my grandma got fed up with the hospital and sent him to a predetermined nursing facilty.
where he died.
I do not know your mother but let me just say if she wants to go home let her, the doctors do not always know best let her go home and die with some dignity. not in a hospital gown in a strange bed with all these do dad's in her.
you cannot prevent her death only prolong the pain.
Your "hitman" anecdote brought to mind an agreement my grandmother has with several members of our family. We refer to it simply as "chocolate pudding". Should she find herself in the state your Mom is in (and my thoughts are with you), one of us is to bring her some "special" chocolate pudding. We kid about it but hearing of situations such as yours cements the fact that I stand ready to assist my grandmother in as pain-free an end as is possible, should she find herself in a position that the doctors are prolonging the inevitable in an inhumane fashion. Again, my wishes are with you...
what do i do?
Michelle is a very quiet and private person and has found the symptoms of her disease distressing. she has state quite clearly that she only wants her son and daughter with her when she dies.
at handover we are told that she is likely to die in the next couple of days. when i enter the ward i see her bed surrounded by people; her son is there with his girlfriend, her daughter has brought a number of friends with her, her ex-husband is there accompanied by two children and three of her friends are standing at the end of the bed crying.
WHAT DO I DO
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stay strong like i said, not just for you for you mom and the rest of your family.
my heart goes out to you and yours.
love ya toni. stay strong
Posted by: cathy at June 16, 2003 6:12 AM