With so much death in the news, and on my mind, I thought an article in The New York Times by Jane E. Brody,Facing Up to the Inevitable, in Search of a Good Death, was worth noting and passing along. The writing is crystal clean but softly so, the knowledge is invaluable. Here's how it starts:
The year was 1958, I was 16 and my mother was lying in a hospital bed connected to all sorts of tubes and was dying of cancer. As her life slipped away, a nurse slapped an oxygen mask on her face and asked me to hold it. There was no chance for either of us to say goodbye or 'I love you.' I carry this medicalized memory of my mother's death with me to this day.
I am hardly alone. Cicely Saunders, the founder of the first modern hospice, said, "How people die remains in the memories of those who live on."
Experts on end-of-life care say that my mother's death was handled wrong, all wrong. Chalk it up to ignorance back then. But 45 years later, despite a greatly enhanced understanding of what happens to a person near the end of life, little has changed in the way most people die in hospitals or nursing homes.
All too often, life is prolonged in pain or discomfort, with medical interventions and instruments precluding an opportunity for loved ones to say goodbye.
Such was the case for 22-year-old Dave Fulkerson, who was hit by a car while he was jogging with his girlfriend. In the intensive care unit, his family was not allowed to see him for three hours. By then, he was no longer able to talk. Further, only one person was allowed in for five minutes every two hours. Eventually, his frustrated girlfriend went home, and his parents fell asleep in the waiting room, only to be awakened by a nurse and told their son had died.
The way that I heard the words informing me that my 57 year-old, perfectly healthy father was dead haunts me, torments me, turns the center of me into shivering, quivering black dread and panic still, and it has been 28 years ago this week. Those words came from a loved one who in her pain wanted to hurt someone who loved him as much as she did so that perhaps in a moment of great need I would love her the way I loved him. It did not work. Read the rest of this article in The New York Times...
