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At 102, my
mother’s life ebbed slowly when she caught the flu.
She lingered over four days, steadily progressing toward the
inevitable. From time to time, even toward the end, she
would rally, open her blue eyes and listen as we told her we
loved her. She would hear us between gasps of breath, breath
that had become shallow and rasping.
Born when
the first Roosevelt was president, she had lived through two
world wars to see man walk on the moon. In 1944, she
gave a son for freedom. She was a hero to all who knew
her. She was the hardest working woman we knew, and she
didn’t mind telling you so, expecting the same backbreaking
ethic from all of her children and grandchildren. Friends’
weren’t exempted.
Yet the
value of her life in quantitative terms had long passed.
She had blown the top off the actuarial test, living well
beyond her allotted time and her savings. Each month,
the care home would receive her income; all from the
government, and a small check paid by an insurance policy my
late brother had bought as an 18-year-old kid during World War
II. The policy paid her for more than 60 years.
The total of all her income was just enough to cover the
$1,400 charged by the home each month.
Had she
been confined to a nursing home in all likelihood she would
have died in a hospital bed in the (hopefully) clean room
where she had lived – or more likely, in the impersonal
confines of a hospital room, transferred there so that the
home could fill the bed with another paying customer who might
stay awhile.
In each
place, the instructions given to the nursing staff on her
instruction was “no code,” shorthand for “do not
resuscitate.”
That was
the old way to die for the elderly, the inelegant death
without dignity that makes life’s final transition one of
fear, darkness and loathing.
My mother
had none of that. This Gold Star Mother died in her
favorite place where she had spent her last years.
She was
dressed in a silk Mandarin top, white on white, a fashion
plate for sleeping or dying.
Family and
staff were there with her until the end. She was
surrounded by the everyday activities of her home and the
familiar faces, and more importantly voices, of those who
loved and cared for her. As she lay dying, a big screen
television relayed the broadcast of a Texas A&M basketball
game near where she reclined in healthier days as morphine was
now administered to ease her dying. In normal times, an
avid sports fan to the end, she would have delighted in
watching the game.
A private
duty nurse and the caregivers who had administered to her
daily swabbed her open mouth as it became dry from gasping.
The liquid soothed her parched tongue and cheeks, even if she
couldn’t take a drink. She showed little reaction as the
caregivers attempted to make her comfortable during her final
hours.
Her kidneys
had failed the day before. There would be no turning back, no
hope for another day.
Her habit
before sleep each night for more than 40 years was to drink a
glass of red wine. She, as well as her family, was
convinced that the ritual was the reason in large part for her
remarkably long life. It was now time to go to sleep.
We got a
glass of her favorite wine for all in the room, and one for
her as well. Even though she could not swallow, she
could taste at this eleventh hour of such a long life. We
dipped the sponge swab in the wine and she clamped down on it
like a Popsicle as we made our toast to her remarkable
life. Everything was normal for her. Nothing was
morose. There was none of the horrid agony of death for
either her, or the friends and family who surrounded her.
Normal conversation continued as we made our toast, and she
savored her last taste of wine.
Nearby sat
my sister who is also a resident of the home. She’s an
84-year-old Alzheimer’s patient. “I want the Army
here when it’s my time,” she blurted out, perhaps the most
cogent thing she had said all day. The message was
clear. What we were witnessing in this enlightened home
was another way to die.
It is time
to bring the sunshine into the transition between life and
death. So often when the end is near we are faced with
an institutional setting in which the elderly are warehoused
without any quality of life whatsoever, much less a quality of
death. It doesn’t have to be that way.
Sure, we
can shed tears and grieve, and for that matter, roll on the
floor and pull out our hair. That is normal, and even
desirable. But I can assure you, there is a better way
to die, and my mother did it as the wine tasted sweet upon her
lips.
Steven
Long is the author of Death Without Dignity, Texas Monthly
Press,
and Out of Control, St. Martin’s Press. |
