One Breath At A Time ...

For the past six months I have watched my older sister slowly deteriorate from the debilitating conditions of lung and esophageal cancers. As they slowly close off her airway she suffocates a little more each and every breath. While the combination of pain killers and breathing treatments helps her battle, we both know the eventual outcome; it’s just a shame nobody could convince her 50 years ago that smoking was a bad idea.

We are all dying, just at different rates. There will come a time when each of us escapes our broken bodies and goes ….. wherever your particular belief structure suggests you will go; but having go so slowly and painfully just doesn’t seem right to me which is one of the reasons I guess I support those that feel we should each have a say in our final months, weeks, days, hours …. To be able to say “OK, I have battled this as far as I can, now I want the right to decide how it will end”.

Oh, I could probably give her the entire jar of morphine and put her our of her misery and the way hospice is structured, nobody would be the wiser …. But I would know. I would know that at that last fleeting moment when the final act much be performed, it was my decision and not hers. No matter how merciful I might think it is, only she can decide if and when she is ready, if at all.

Having been clinically dead on two occasions I must unfortunately report that there was no bright light, enchanting music, the smell of fresh cookies, or any of those things we hear about. Of course there was also no terror of damnation, raging fires or unspeakable monsters. It was more like walking into a bright room and the light flicking off. Darkness, silence, and not warm or cold … just stillness without sensation.

So I sit with her, often holding her hand and telling her funny stories about what our lives were like while we were growing up. Sometimes she manages a smile between those coughing fits. She reminds me that she wants to just go to sleep and now wake up. Sometimes she asks where I put her horse (hasn’t had one in over 20 years) and then cries because neither one of her boys have come to see her.

So many emotions, feelings, and all that goes with it. I see it all in her face, but there in her eyes is that little look that she only gives me for being the only one that didn’t abandoned her and has stuck by her side.

I can only hope that before it is my turn, there will be someone like that for me ….. I can only hope …..