More stories fill the thread:
In the 1980s, I taught conversational English in Japan. One of my favorite classes had just three students – three middle-aged women who weren’t afraid to say what they felt. Once, one of the ladies missed two weeks. When she returned, she apologized for missing class – her father had died. I hurriedly said how sad I was to hear it, but before I could go on, she stopped me. She told me that I shouldn’t be sad – his death was beautiful. That’s certainly an adjective I had never heard applied to death before.
She explained that her father had caught a cold while he was riding his bike. He was in his late 70s. After a few hours in bed, as the cold turned into pneumonia, he told everyone that he was dying. His children and their families came from where they lived and congregated at his bedside. He was alert and not in pain. He spent a day saying goodbye to everyone. Once he had a chance to talk to his children and grandchildren, he went into a coma. He died an hour later.
By the time the student finished the story, we were all crying and smiling.
Another joins this reader in some gallows humor:
The thread has reminded me of the old joke: I want to die like me grandfather did – peacefully in his sleep – and NOT like the screaming, terrified passengers in that bus he was driving.
In truth, I actually would like to die as my grandmother did. At age 90 she was in marvelous health, needed no medications, and was quite active in her community and church. On the eve of one of her many trips to Norway to visit relatives, she visited her doctor for a checkup. After the nurse had checked her vitals my grandmother remained seated on the exam table. The nurse exited saying the doctor would be in to see her momentarily. My grandmother joked that if it took too long she might just take a nap.
When the nurse and the doctor came back in my grandmother was down on the table, a smile on her face. She had passed, simply, and one assumes painlessly. Would that we all slipped this mortal coil with such ease.
Another reader:
My mom was diagnosed with Stage IV ovarian cancer in November 2009.
She refused any radiation or chemotherapy (she was 84), but in the five months of her final illness, she claimed never to have a minute of pain. (Personally, I think this was due to a benign tumor she had for years above her ear – I think it must have blocked pain receptors in some way.)
At any rate, Easter was April 4 in 2010. Our family celebrated on Saturday so various college students could get back to school on Sunday, and my sisters and all our kids (and their multiple significant others) were there. We had a splendid time, although by then Mom was very frail and occasionally on oxygen. She wasn’t strong enough to sit at the dinner table, but she did spend that time in a chair in the living room, close enough to hear and enjoy the fun. Later that evening we helped her up the stairs to her bedroom. This was the first time she needed help – she was pretty indomitable. We helped her into bed and told her we loved her, and she died in her sleep sometime during the night.
When we went up to see her in the morning, she looked so peaceful. If she had scripted her last 24 hours, I don’t think it would have been any different.
Another:
We lost my brother last year. He was 25, perfectly healthy, almost done with the Navy’s cryptology network technician training, when he started having trouble breathing. After a month or two of struggling with what the base doctor thought might be asthma, he almost blacked out walking to his truck, and checked himself into a hospital. He had rhabdomyosarcoma, a heart tumor. He passed away less than eight months after his original diagnosis.
What was good about that? Nothing – but so many things. He was tired of fighting about three months in, and I worried for him then; so many cancers take years and years to reach a conclusion. The speed of it all was hard – but also merciful, in a way.
His greatest hope was that he wouldn’t lose mental and physical faculties, and for the most part, he didn’t. The stroke and subsequent brain tumor impeded his language faculties, but he could still speak and interact with us, and take care of himself – albeit slowly – almost to the very end.
His treatments were conducted about two hours away from our hometown, which allowed him a strong support system of family and friends. Our mom was able to stay with him at the cancer care center, so from the diagnosis to the end, he was never on his own. In the end, he died in his childhood room, with my mom singing to him and his siblings around him holding his hands and sufficient meds to keep the pain and anxiety at bay, and enough counseling from hospice and the funeral home staff that we knew kind of what to expect.
We all knew this was a traumatic thing, but it didn’t feel traumatic – more like a clock winding down and then just not ticking anymore. There wasn’t a visible wrenching from life to death, just smaller and smaller steps until you pass some invisible line and then … then he looked just like before, only motionless. Whether as the person leaving or as the person being left – I really don’t know what I would change about that. I can’t come up with a much better way to go.
The Dish 