An old lady I have been caring for for the past five years died this morning.
She didn't die well. She had been sinking deeper into dementia for the past couple of years - a strange form of it, which left her recognition of people (names, faces, histories, characters, etc.) peculiarly complete but made her ever more incapable of organizing the simplest things in her life. In the end, it was an abdominal tumour which killed her, discovered only six weeks ago as a result of a routine blood-check. She was admitted to hospital shortly before Christmas and never came out. She died in some pain ... and great fear and confusion. She was not, as far as I know, someone who had ever gone through great conflicts in her life. Nursing her own mother to a great age, she missed out on the opportunity to marry and have a family, worked all her life in a department-store until retirement, fifteen years ago, and lived a very quiet, somewhat lonely life, supported by visits from a home-care service and visiting the day-care centre where I work, five days a week. I have worked in nursing for over twenty years now and have seen many people die. Some deaths have been epiphanies, others have been horrific. I have seen non-believers go in great serenity and deeply religious people fighting out of fear of the unknown to hang on to life beyond all physical and spiritual capacity. I have experienced people (who were not obviously pre-final) correctly predicting their deaths, I have had people grasp my hand and then, voluntarily, let go. Some have not been able to die until they were certain that they were not alone, others have rejected any offers of help, waiting until they were alone to die. I have read my Kübler-Ross (I have even taught Kübler-Ross to nursing students) but today I am less sure. Death is certainly, as they say, the great leveller. Some do go gentle into that good night, others rage against the dying of the light. But all that you have achieved, titles, wealth, possessions, power, becomes meaningless. I like to think of death as placing the final tessera into the mosaic of my life. I deeply hope that I can face it with dignity and be able to freely let go of that which I can no longer hold on to. It is the final journey and, even if I am deeply agnostic - well, that also leaves me the option of it being possibly another great adventure, even if my reason tells me that it is most probably the unending peace of complete obliteration. Francis On 19 Jan., 15:51, Molly <[email protected]> wrote: > I watched my friend Chris Bernard face his eminent death with love, > courage and dignity. While participating in this with him, I > wondered, what is the state of mind that death requires of us? What > can we bring to it to ease our own suffering? Should we rage against > the dying of the light like Dylan Thomas? Should we reach out for > spiritual support, ask forgiveness, say farewell? What do YOU think? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups ""Minds Eye"" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/minds-eye?hl=en.
