Dealing with the Inevitable

My wife got a call from her sister today, informing her that their mother had a gallbladder infection that the medical staff of the nursing home could not deal with. The 'do not resuscitate' order in my mother-in-law's living will is very strict...it provides that absolutely no unusual measures be taken to sustain her life. Apparently, in this case, the interpretation is that she was not even to be taken to the hospital to have antibiotics administered. My wife and her sister conferred and agreed that was not really their mother's intent. She would not have wished to have basic treatment withheld that would deal with a painful infection. But both of them have strong beliefs that, when the time comes, they should not intervene to prolong her life. That's tough and painful and makes tears flow. My emotions are always just under, if not on top of, the surface, so my own tears fell when my wife came in to see me today, trying to stay composed but terribly upset at what could be the iminent death of her mother. That's very, very hard to deal with.

So, there is worry and concern and wishing and hoping going on tonight in my house, and in a 2-story house on a little island just north of Boston, where my sister-in-law lives.

My mother-in-law is far away and she has been essentially incommunicado for a couple of years, due to a stroke. She is being cared for in California and I believe her care is first rate. But when things get shaken up, like today, lots of fears surface. Is is the right place? Did we do the right thing? Will we do the right thing? Losing a parent is gut-wrenching...at least it was for me. I still have a hard time controlling my emotions when I think back to the times my father, and then my mother, died. Love is a deep, deep emotion, one that ignores our most powerful efforts to remain stoic. Love does not 'truck' stoicism. And it's a damn good thing.

It's odd that I would have written, within the last day or two, of someone dealing with those last moments of life. I sometimes understand how coincidence breeds belief in the most unbelievable things.

Tonight's not the night for me to write much that I want to leave behind. So I'll pause here and think about what I do want to leave as my legacy, later. And I'll wipe away those tears that have accumulated as I contemplate what is going on in my wife's family.