dyingtohelp.com

Four weeks ago my mother told us that things would get bad as she neared the final days of her life.

As always, Bette knew what was ahead and tried to prepare her kids. Once a mother, always a mother, even when your “kids” are middle-aged adults.

“You need you to know that it will be very hard for you caring for me. Harder than anything you can imagine.”

“Mom, we’ll be fine, we’ll be OK,” I said.

“You won’t be OK. But as you’re going through those final days know that I will be OK. I’ll be so heavily medicated that I won’t be aware of the pain or any of the other awful physical things that go along with the very end.”

As I lay outside Bette’s bedroom all day on Friday listening to her gasping and choking on the fluid in her lungs, I remembered what she said. As I tried to put the morphine into her cheek, only to have her choke on it because she was losing the ability to swallow, I remembered what she said.

And when Bette stopped breathing altogether on Saturday afternoon, I remembered my mother told us that  there would be a day like this when  “the adventure would be over.”

Psychologists say adventurous experiences can be negative, like fear, and positive, like being immersed in the flow.  There’s nothing more adventurous than helping someone you love die. There’s no day sadder than when they do.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 31st, 2009 at 10:14 pm and is filed under The final days. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.