How to say goodbye!

In a recent issue of Time magazine, one of the magazines contributors--Joe Kline--wrote a piece entitled “How to Die�. In that piece he spoke of his two eighty plus year old parents who had been together since the first grade and how they, particularly his father, confronted death. The piece was really a clinical expose that spotlighted the provision in the Obama Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) that would change the focus of all healthcare from a fee based system to a system of performance based care where the care was more focused on outcomes than it was income for the doctors in charge. That provision may be one of the reasons that the medical profession hates Obamacare so much.

In the Kline piece, he speaks of his fathers passage and how, after his wife of over sixty years turned terminal and passed away, he simply gave up and waited for a death that could not come soon enough for him. It was a reminder to me of how my own father waited for death after my mother died just two months after both of them entered the nursing home together in early 1998. My brother and sister-in-law had come to see me at my home in early January of that year and had finally convinced me that there was no other course of action but to place my parents there after it had become apparent that they could no longer care for themselves. In my family’s world, as in so many others, being placed in a nursing home was a very derogatory sort of thing with all of the negative connotations that came about with such an action. We can remember sitting at the kitchen table of their home and informing them of the decision that had been made and seeing my father shed some tears and asking what would happen to the home that they had lived in for over fifty years. It had been a place of comfort and shelter for all of us and confronting the idea that it would no longer be there was almost as difficult as placing my parents in the place that they would spend the rest of their so brief lives once it was gone. Both my brother and I had adequate homes and this small white shingled house would have to be sold.

My mother accepted going into the nursing home with her usual grace while my father immediately began to resist the idea, telling my brother who lived close to the place that he wanted to go home day after day. My father and my brother had always been very close and this sudden change in my parents lives almost immediately drove a wedge in that relationship that would last until the day that my father died. It had been the custom in our family in previous generations that one of the children would move in with the parents and care for them in their home until there was no further need for that care. However, there were only two of us children and times and customs had changed around us as the twentieth century had worn on. My parents had paid care for several years in their home but, as so often does, the funds to provide that care had finally run out and finances as much as anything else dictated the move that had to be made. We still remember fondly the stories about my great grandfather, a civil war veteran, and how his fifty dollar a month veterans pension in the middle of the depression had helped the family finances until his death in 1932 at the age of 88.

My father was in better physical shape than my mother before they entered the nursing home and my mothers health began to deteriorate rapidly almost from the day that she arrived. They lived in a room together so my father could see this downward spiral happening and was powerless to do anything about it. My father was a large, robust man who had always been physically strong while my mother was much thinner than he and had expended much of her life’s strength working many years longer than she should have as a beautician. It had been a combination of a need for money and her inability to say “no� to the many women who constantly had told her that they just could not see the day when she could no longer fix their hair. She had been the beautician of note around their small rural community for over forty years and practically every female corpse of their generation in the Vienna cemetery had been last touched by her very talented hands. It had all taken its toll on her and, at the end, she simply did not have the strength to carry on once the anchor of their home where her shop was located was gone.

Hospice was called in soon after she entered the nursing home and, at that time, calling in this organization was a signal to one and all that time was short. They were very nice, compassionate and kind and they did all that they could to ease this painful transition that this small and close family was having to confront. My father went into a form of denial and simply did not discuss the idea that his wife over sixty years would soon be gone. His constant comment was that he needed her. Then he would look over at her and simply shake his head. We went down to Vienna to the nursing home whenever we could as we attempted to juggle family, a thriving business and this sudden situation that was confronting us. My parents had always been so independent that to see them in this situation was, to say the least, a very depressing sort of thing. We don’t know why it was, but, we ended up at the nursing home one night after my father had gone to bed for the night but my mother was, for some strange reason, still up and was still half way in charge of her facilities. My mother had been a woman of five foot eight height in her prime but the years had taken their toll and she was, at the end, barely five feet tall. She sat there in a chair in her nightgown as we drew up a chair close to her and had what was to be our final conversation with the woman who had meant so much to our lives. Dad was asleep and we could have one last private conversation that came at the end of thousands that we had had in the past. She didn’t say much as we poured out our heart to her and told her just how much she had meant to us across the many years. At the end, she simply reached over and gave us one last quiet kiss. We had not been home quite an hour when we got the call that she had taken a turn for the worst and we made the thirty mile trip back down late at night to give her one last goodbye and to tell her that we loved her just one last time. She laid there sideways in her bed and grunted at us as this was the very best that she could do. We returned the next day to find her in a coma. She died about two o’clock the next morning. It was a quiet, gentle passage for a person who had spent so much of her life pleasing and listening to the troubles and lives of others.

As we remember these events and others that we have heard about over the years, we can still say so very little about death that has not been said before. As we grow older, however, we have come to the realization that those who go before us prepare us for our own time when we will confront this same situation for ourselves. If we are allowed to be old and to have lived a full life, perhaps death is not so painful or so frightening but might be the welcome end to a life well lived and the gateway to new adventures that will surely await us on the other side. Our faith assures us of that. We have read about death before and one of the most poignant things we ever saw was the story told about the man who awaited death and seemed so depressed until he had a dream one night in which his wife returned and told him that they would soon be together again and that everything was going to be alright. To be given a full life and a good death at the end of it may be one of the greatest gifts that can ever be bestowed. We did not cry much at our mothers passage because we knew that she had been given these things and that she was now safe from all the bad things such as the pain and sorrow that this life can throw at you. And, we have learned this: when it comes time to say goodbye, whether it be ourselves or others, say it and do it with all the love that one can muster. It will surely be enough.

IOVHO,

Regards,

Joe

To say that "God exists" is the greatest understatement ever made across space and time.