HELPING MY MOTHER THROUGH HER DYING PROCESS

My mother had been bed-ridden for five years after suffering from heart congestion and five cardiac arrests in one night.  But her mind was sharp and since she was in a great nursing home, our times together were quality times.  Then her systems started to fail her one by one.  After a while, the doctors and nurses said that if my siblings wanted to see her while still alive, they should arrive immediately.  They came and we would all gather around her bed and talk with her and often sing songs.  She could no longer eat or drink and so we took turns putting ice on her lips in hopes of giving her some moisture as she had said she did not want to be hooked up to an IV to prolong the process.  But her mind was still sharp, and she was talking about dying and even looking forward to it. 

She explained to us that it wasn’t a matter that she didn’t want to eat – but rather that she couldn’t.  She had lost her swallow reflex and she knew that she would probably die by starvation.  She said she had heard of people dying that way and always thought it would be a terrible way to go, but she told us that it wasn’t bad at all.  She was in no pain and she was actually looking forward to dying with us around her.  I was able to relate this part of the story in a Letter to the Editors during the time of Terry Schiavo hoping to convince people that it truly isn’t an onerous way to die.

After the next weekend, my siblings had to return to their jobs and family as there was no indication how much longer my mother would be able to hold on.  Then, around Tuesday of that week, she started to recover.  No one knows how or why, she just recovered.  She was still bed-ridden and she had her ups and downs.  And her ups weren’t as high as before and her downs might have been lower.  But she continued from February to December when her systems started to shut down again.

But this time, she wasn’t talking about it like in February.  Finally, around the middle of the month, I asked her if she didn’t think she was going through the same process a before.  She said she assumed she probably was but then I asked her why she didn’t feel free to talk about it as before.  She explained that she didn’t want to die around the Christmas holidays for fear of it spoiling our holidays.  I was thankful for the opportunity to tell her that I had just listened to a program (on NPR) about people going through the dying process and how for some it is an easy voyage, while for others it is a difficult voyage.  I told her how the difference seemed to be in the concept of “Letting Go”.  The patient needed to feel free to let go.  But I also told her that the relatives also need to learn the concept of letting go.  Often, a person will recognize they are dying and will mention it.  Immediately, the family members will chime in and over-ride her and say that “No, you’re going to make it.  You’re going to overcome this.”  So while a patient wants to talk about going through this dying process, they are often not allowed to.  And so refusing to “let go” on the part of either the patient or the patient’s family may make the voyage even more difficult.

I told her that as far as her family was concerned, we had felt ready to have her die back in February.  If there was anything we felt needed to be done before she died, we had had plenty of time to prepare for it.  So it wouldn’t be something that took us by surprise and set us back. 

The next day, when the nurse came in to dress her, my mother told the nurse “I’m ready to die now”, and she did – two days later.

I was so glad that I could be a positive force in my mother’s dying process.  So many people have so many tragic stories of their loved ones dying.  I feel blessed that my story is such a positive one.

David Kimball