TheBanyanTree: Assisted Suicide - the topic of the week

[NancyIee at aol.com]

Beautifully written, and I am so glad you were able to "be there" for your  
loved ones.
 
My sister and I were there when our mom passed after a too-long battle.  
They gave her 6 months, and eventually, she was in Hospice. They were 
incredible  kind and loving to her, so much so, that she defied the odds and lived 7 
more  years.  She never left the Hospice, for when it was discovered she 
was not  yet "done", she had taken on another role, caregiver to those dying. 
 
She read to them, she fed them if they were able to eat, she wrote letters  
for them, she straightened their bedsheets and pillows. She was their angel 
when  their families could not be there. The place was run and serviced by 
a devoted  group of nuns, and she fit right in, loving caregiver to the end.
 
At her own end, she simply slept away, though, somewhere after midnight, as 
 my sister and I kept vigil, she woke.
 
"Momma (her mother and my grandmother) is waiting," she said, and  left.
 
In dying, she lived. 
 
NancyLee