I read an article on the Huffington Post about a woman whose mother had dementia and, although this was her favorite time of year, she didn’t know what time of year it was and how sad that was for this woman to watch. All of the joy that she had experienced with her mom over the years at this time of year – skating in the park, enjoying the crisp weather, the beautiful store windows in New York as Christmas approached – all of it would never be again with her. She was slowly dying and this woman was forced to watch it happen, was forced to watch her mother turn into another person who (granted) remembered her and her siblings but wasn’t sure who her granddaughter was and who just wasn’t the person that this woman loved, admired and needed. I can’t image that kind of pain and I am honestly happy that I don’t have to.
This week, here in the US, there has been quite the media storm about this woman on the West Coast who decided to end her own life because she had terminal brain cancer – there are handful of states that allow ending your own life with a prescribed amount of medication. This woman was young, younger than me I believe, and was getting sicker and sicker each day. She had a choice – to die the way that many people with that disease die, which isn’t easy on anyone involved and is painful and full of medications, IVs and incoherency, or to die by her own terms peacefully. I watched my father-in-law deteriorate from bladder cancer back in 2000 or 2001 and it was horrible. In the end he was confined to a bed in their house and was on so many pain medications he was barely conscious; when he was conscious it was confusing for him, scary for him and I think scary for anyone around him. Many times he didn’t know where he was, didn’t know who people were, and forgot how to speak English (German was his first language). It was a horrible death. One that I am happy my mother did not have to endure. When someone is faced with a diagnosis of death – which really is what it turns into – what options do you have? There are some people that feel the ‘natural’ order of things is the right path to follow. Take the medications and treatments, deal with the pain and indignity that can come along with all of those treatments and side-effects, and end up dying hopped up on meds either in hospice, or in a hospital having been taken off of machines like my mom, or at home with a home health nurse present. I think that, had things been different for my mom and if she had had the option, she would have done what that young woman did. My mom didn’t want to die the way that she did – if you really think about it, would you want to die like that? She was on machines that were keeping her alive, her body shutting down and infected due to the massive doses of antibiotics she was on to stave off pneumonia that ended up throwing off a different infection, her faculties gone, her ability to communicate gone. I know she didn’t want to die, which is why she held on as long as she did, but there were no options left. If she had known months or even weeks before, I think she would have at least attempted to take her own life if she had not sought out options to have it done with assistance like this woman had. My mom’s death was nothing but sad, traumatic, and horrible for all involved. Anyone that condemns that girl for putting herself and her family in a position of peace must not have ever sat by their loved one’s side as they took their last breath.
Another article I read compared her ‘suicide’ to that of the people that leapt to their deaths on 9/11 from the World Trade Center Towers. Do we ever say or read that those people killed themselves, that they committed suicide? No, we don’t. But they were in the same situation. They knew they were going to die. There was no way out of the buildings for them. So they had a choice – die by smoke inhalation or fire or by being crushed by the floors above them as the building fell, or jump. I can’t say what I would have done, but I can understand and appreciate why someone would chose to die the way that they wanted to and not the way that would have just happened to them had they sat by and done nothing. And that’s how I felt those days, sitting by my mom as the machines pumped away and we watched her blood pressure and her temperature as if any of those numbers would change her fate. I felt like I was doing nothing, because that’s what I WAS doing. There was nothing I could do for her but sit there and hope that somehow, she knew I was there and that she wasn’t alone. I wish that she had had a choice. The chance to say this is what I want. The chance to say good-bye before her body decided it was done; the chance to see her granddaughter once more and maybe give her something to remember her grandmother by, the chance to kiss my father once more, the chance to call me “sweetheart” once more. I would have given anything to have her pass peacefully instead of what ended up happening. That experience was anything but peaceful and now all I can hope for is that she has found peace where ever she may be.
Not a day goes by that I don’t miss my mom and I wish that things had been different and I wish so very much that she was still here – not for me really but for my daughter, for my dad. I wish that we had known if just for the chance to rationalize it, make sense of it, and say good bye. I said good bye to her but I am not all that sure she heard me, and that will always be with me.
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