On Death and Dying - Part 1

“Do not stand at my grave and weep.  I am not there.  I do not sleep. 

I am a thousand winds that blow.  I am the diamond glints on snow.  

I am the sunlight on ripened grain.  I am the gentle autumn rain.  

When you awaken in the mornings’s hush, I am the swift uplifting rush. 

Of quiet birds in circled flight.  I am the soft stars that shine at night. 

Do not stand at my grave and cry; I am not there, I did not die.”  

My Aunt Mary K had been slowly deteriorating.  She was getting thinner and thinner and her dementia was getting worse.  She ate less and less.  I had brought her out to California with the hope that being around family and in a better assisted living facility she would thrive.  But that never happened.  I visited her as often as I felt I emotionally could but she continued to deteriorate.  It was a very sad thing to watch and much more difficult than I anticipated.  But she needed me.  She needed to know I was there and she needed to feel loved.  I was all she had out here and I was determined to make sure she knew she had not been forgotten.  It was very difficult to spend time with her.  She quit conversing so some days I would just go and sit with her.  I felt more and more frustrated and more and more sad for her.  Then, in early July of 2014, she quit eating and drinking and quit getting out of bed.    I went to her bedside and although she was still responding to me, something had changed.  I knew she was on her way out.  At the facility they told me she could go the next day or it could be three weeks.  I was determined to not let her die alone but I also knew that I could not stay with her 24 hours a day – emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually, I just couldn’t do it.  So, I called a friend of mine who I felt would be a good one to help me.  Her name was Gail.  Every morning I would get up early and sit with Mary K until about 10 a.m.  I would talk to her and touch her and lie down in the bed with her.  I read her poetry and sang to her.  I sang “Hush Little Baby”, the song I used to sing to you boys when you were babies.  Then Gail would sit with her from 10 to 2 while I was at work.   I would then return at 2 to sit with her again.  Sometimes I would be with her just until around dinner time.  Other evenings I would stay until late.  Each day she responded less and less.  It was so difficult to watch her slowly ebb away and sometimes I would find myself crying and yelling at her to “just die already” because I couldn’t stand to see her this way. I was emotionally exhausted and found the waiting to be intolerable. I had never been through the dying process before with anyone I was close to. Finally after a week of this I got it in my head that I needed to assist her death.  I had a friend, Baz, who is a physician and I decided to call him and get him to prescribe some morphine so I could give it to her and ease her passing.  Now Baz is an interesting fellow.  He is one of my partying buddies but also has a very religious bent.  He knows his bible backward and forward and has some very strong feelings about God and the afterlife.  I told him what I wanted and he met with me over his lunch hour.  I explained Mary K’s situation to him through tears and he listened patiently.  After I was finished our conversation went like this: 

“Is she in pain?”  

“No,” I said.  

“Is she in any kind of distress?”  

“No.”  

“Then”, he said, “the reason we are doing this is for you, not her?”  

In that moment I realized that he was, in fact, correct.  This had nothing to do with her comfort or wishes.  This had to do with me, my pain and my discomfort.  And we both agreed that this wasn’t a good enough reason to hasten the process.  We talked a lot about death at that point and I realized that even though I had decided for myself that she was ready to go and that I should help her die, what if, what if on the inside she still had some work to do before she moved along to the afterlife?  What if all of those who went before her, Mom and Leo and Edith and John and Batch, were all there with her and she was working through whatever else she had to work through before she could move on?  Who am I to say what was going on at those moments?  She had obviously pulled inside of herself but that didn’t mean she was ready to take that final step and since she wasn’t in pain or distress, why was I trying to speed up the process, a process that may be very necessary for a healthier crossing to the other side. 

My only experience I could compare dying to was giving birth.  Although the process of labor is physically challenging and one of the most difficult things I have ever done, it is a process and I always felt the need for the entire process.  I never believed and still do not believe that we should be rushing that process just because we can and just because it is uncomfortable for us to see the mother in pain.  I think that when the mother and baby are ready, it will happen in its time.  That a woman may have something she needs to work through before she can become a mother. And although there are many people who can support and comfort the Mom during the process, the moment of birth is hers alone and she is the only one who can do it.  And that’s how I feel about death.  There must be a process and we shouldn’t be rushing that process.  None of us can say what is going on during those final days, hours and minutes before death.  And I truly feel that each person decides on their own when to go.  We can be with them up to the point of death but they have to take that final step on their own and they will choose when to take that final step.  I sat with Mary K for another few days until finally on the evening of July 10th she passed away.  Her eyes were open and I was holding her and just after she took her last breath I saw a glow in her face as her spirit left her body.  I thought the sun had just come from behind a cloud and shined in the room but then when I looked outside, there were no clouds.  She passed very peacefully and I was honored to be with her at the time of her passing.