I’ve spent a lot of time over the last few years thinking, writing and speaking about end-of-life care, but this issue recently became quite personal for me. My mother-in-law died two weeks ago.
A ringer in her youth for Donna Reed, with Rita Hayworth legs, my mother-in-law possessed a dazzling memory and a designer’s flair, and she loved to surround herself with family and friends (“where the action is,” she used to say). She spent most of her 86 years following her husband across the country, teaching art in the schools where he taught. But wherever they landed, she managed always to make new friends. Lots of friends. When one of her sons passed away, she and my father-in-law received more than six hundred letters of condolence.
But by the time my mother-in-law died 14 days ago, her social circle had shrunk considerably. She had been battling rheumatoid arthritis for almost 50 years, a series of debilitating strokes for 10, and the ulcers on her legs that would not heal would, in the final year of her life, necessitate an above-the-knee amputation. Over the last few months, unable to hold a pen to write and too weak to speak into a phone, my mother-in-law saw her social life whither away. Her once expansive world was reduced to the square footage accessible by wheelchair and amenable to the trappings of all the medical equipment she needed.
In the days since her death, I have often thought about the many conversations my mother-in-law and the family had with the doctors and nurses about the dying process. There was the initial discussion over two months ago that she was likely to die soon and would benefit from hospice, and then there were also the many daily conversations about her comfort, about what she wanted and what she did not.
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