TheBanyanTree: Assisted Suicide - the topic of the week

[Gloria]

Sad memories, beautiful writing.   Must be part of your book, right?!

Keep on keepin' on!

glo

On 4/26/10, Monique Colver <monique.colver at gmail.com> wrote:
> I don't know if assisted suicide is right or wrong, I only know that people
> should have options, and that taking away their options isn't good for them,
> or for us, because who knows? I may want that option myself some day.
>
> When my ex-husband was dying I sat at his bedside, day after day, doing
> nothing more than being there. He had all the heavy lifting to do, all the
> work that goes into dying. I had the lightweight work, the sort that is
> never quite enough help, but is the most we can, in most cases, do.
>
> He was ready to go. He was so tired of the pain, of not being the same
> person anymore, and he wasn't afraid of death at all, but he was very afraid
> of dying.
>
> Two entirely different things, aren't they?
>
> How does one enter into not being anymore?
>
> Sometimes he would wake up and see me sitting there, sometimes still holding
> my hand, and he would say, "I'm still here," an annoyed statement of fact.
>
> He was still there.
>
> I'd calm him, and tell him everything was going to be okay.
>
> "I don't know how to die," he'd say, the words themselves taking a toll on
> him.
>
> "It's okay," I'd tell him, "You can't possibly do this wrong."
>
> He always worried about doing things wrong, and even this, the dying,
> concerned him.
>
> We'd give him morphine, his father rubbing it carefully into his arm. He
> couldn't take anything by mouth, for it would all come up again, whatever it
> was, so the topical morphine was the only thing we could use to ease his
> pain.
>
> I'm not sure how effective it was, but it allowed him some sleep, and I
> stayed with him as much as I could, until I myself had to sleep, or eat. I
> hated leaving his bedside. I'd promised him he'd never be alone.
>
> Sometimes he'd smile at me, a beautiful ray of light, and sometimes, when we
> were joking, he'd laugh, though it was more of a soft chuckle that barely
> escaped.
>
> I wouldn't have missed being there with him for anything.
>
> The end wasn't clean. He bled out, and though he was far from caring by then
> I tried to mop the blood from his face as I held his head, but the blood
> came anyway, spilling out of him as if an internal faucet had been turned
> on.
>
> He was 37 when he died, two years ago.
>
> Last year, a few days before Thanksgiving, I sat with my Mom. A few nights
> before I'd slept with her in the guest room bed, holding her hand. I don't
> know if she knew I was there at all. She'd been conscious when I arrived,
> and when my brother had arrived, and she'd seen all of us, my sister and
> brother and I, together.
>
> And then she was unconscious, and I slept with her that first night, holding
> her hand throughout the night, while my sister slept on the floor at the
> foot of the bed.
>
> For several days, or a couple of days, I don't even remember, we positioned
> her and moved her and my sister, the LPN, gave her meds. We could tell when
> she needed morphine, though the signs were subtle. It never hurts to give
> extra morphine. She never woke up, and because we had her positioned just so
> to prevent bedsores I couldn't sleep with her again, but I'd sit with her.
>
> We kept a baby monitor next to her, so if we were in the other room we could
> hear anything, any change at all, and sometimes, when there was the
> slightest change, we'd all rush in, to find nothing amiss.
>
> The last night we'd sent my stepfather up to bed, and my sister lay down in
> the darkened living room, and I sat at my mother's bedside with my laptop.
>
> And then there was the slightest noise, and it's true, it does sound like a
> rattle, and I looked at my mother with her mouth open, and I could see
> movement, and then there was a breath, just one soft one, so quiet. And then
> there was none. And I held her hand, not knowing if she'd know I was there
> or not, but it didn't matter, did it?
>
> There are easy deaths and hard ones, and there are easy decisions and hard
> decisions. Death itself is easy, but dying is not. It's complicated and
> messy and sometimes we don't know the right thing to do. And sometimes death
> takes care of itself, and sometimes it doesn't. All I can do is be there
> when it happens.
> --
> Monique Colver
>