Final gifts . . .

I was with a family over the weekend who lost the husband/father/grandpapa/patriarch suddenly.  Yes he had had heart symptoms for a few years, but the fatal attack caught them all by terrible surprise.  He was well loved;  it was clear that he had lived a well-lived, well-enjoyed life.

He loved his sons and their wives;  he fished and played cards and talked – really – talked and listened – with his grandkids;  he had many friends and the respect of his colleagues.

He had pulled his wife’s pony-tail in the sixth grade and neither ever looked away again.

The family and I talked about the pain of sudden, wrenching loss.  And we also talked about how clear he had been that he did not want to linger in weakness and pain for a long time, and so that in some ways the very shock of his death was a gift.   He did not dwindle away.  He lived at full tilt and then he exited the stage still galloping.

Longterm Caregivers know about a different way of saying goodbye.  We know more than we want to about long and sometimes leisurely and sometimes searing leave-taking.   We  have to learn to keep living even when the one we love is slowly dying,  sometimes  dying inch by inch.  What are the gifts of the long way home?

Three months after my mother’s death, I am realizing that as she weakened, she was able to receive care and love from others in ways that she never experienced in the fullness of her strength.  She always gave advice (often real good advice)  and help.  This time around, she received.

She was not an emotional person.  In her strength, she would laugh lightly at an outburst of enthusiasm and push it away gently or not so gently.   In her weakness, I believe she opened herself to sadness and joy on a deeper level.  She became More in spirit.

What abouat the rest of us?  Her PhD daughter, her MD son, her The Rev. other daughter?  In the long end-stage of her life, we children received the very hard gift of not being able to do enough.  We could not stop her disease or assuage her loneliness.  But we did the best we could and to know that hard truth, in the  wisdom of humility is a gift that will bind her children together for as long as we live.

So one way or another, there are gifts to be given and to receive as we love along toward the swift or slow end of days.  Pain either way, too.  But also the gifts. Peace, martha sterne

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