Today is a sandwich day. Not the eating kind, but existential kind. The kind where I experience the ways life is being cheapened not just in its beginnings, but also at its end. The kind where my prayer time outside an abortion facility is interrupted by a frantic call from my mom who is at the bedside of her brother who is dying of hospice.
I make a frantic call of my own, asking my co-leader to take over my role messaging vigil participants to fill up our calendar for a day or two so I can go to her. I suppose I should think of it as going for them. All of the six siblings and a couple of their spouses are crowded into the house. For most of them, hospice is a thing they accept or even embrace. In the sixty years or so that palliative care has been part of Western medicine, they've become slowly acclimated to the idea that someone will come along and declare that your life is over and pump you full of morphine until you die. It's easier that way. None of the awkward lingering that the elderly tend to when given such extreme measures as IV fluids. Without the large families of the past, it's almost impossible to imagine doing things any other way. Nursing homes or full time home care are insanely expensive and the two or three kids their generation had are ill equipped to pay those bills or do that work, even when almost everyone is holding down a full time job. This is the moment when the housewife suddenly becomes a precious resource with her flexible schedule and well-earned ease in dealing with other people's bodily fluids. Of the sixteen first cousins on that side, most of whom are married, I am one of only two who don't work in a paying job. The other is disabled. I will hug them and try to make sure they eat and drink and listen when needed, but I'm really there for my mom.
So I leave the sidewalk as soon as my replacement arrives and run home to throw dinner in the crock pot for my family. I grab an old Bible on my way out the door. On the sidewalk I read from a Bible app, but there I need something that can be passed around. Something that doesn't have to be re-charged. My uncle's family used to be members of our church. They believe in God. They're pretty sure they own a Bible. I have a whole collection, including ones left behind by several of my husband's grandparents and great aunts and uncles. I suspect that Great Aunt Marie, who I never met, won't mind if I leave her study Bible there for them.
We were very close to this uncle and his kids when I was growing up. My folks helped build this house. A million memories flood me every time I am here. Playing king of hill on the pile of construction sand and eating bologna and ketchup sandwiches when it was just a two-by-four skeleton. Making a fort out of an old log pile. Tromping through the woods. Telling dirty jokes in the tree house. My older and cooler cousin teaching me to slow dance on the driveway before my first junior high party. Panic attacks from the years before I started medication and any large crowd would put me into fight or flight mode. My uncle sure could draw a crowd back in the day. They had great parties here. Panic attacks create irrational fears. I still have to take a few calming breaths when I arrive to remind myself that I'm safe and that I drove myself and can leave at any time. But I can't. Because my uncle is dying and my mom needs someone to hear her when she says, "this is wrong." Someone to say, "I won't let them do this to you."
In survival training they say you can go three minutes without air, three days without water and three weeks without food. My uncle is on his third day without fluids. If you've ever had a really bad hangover, which is mostly dehydration, you have a pretty good idea of how he feels. Or how he would feel if he wasn't receiving a full dose of morphine every time he showed signs of regaining consciousness. If there is ever any doubt of whether I'd want to be artificially hydrated in my final days, let me be clear. I fully consent to IV fluids. I demand IV fluids. I've actually looked into what it would take to have the equipment on hand at home just in case. DO NOT LET ME DIE OF DEHYDRATION.
He may not die of dehydration. He's also laying flat on his back and they are suppressing his cough reflex with drugs. In between visits from the hospice nurse, who clears his airway, his oxygen levels slowly drop as his airway becomes more and more clogged. He may just choke to death on his own phlegm. Also low on my list of ways I want to go.
Everyone wants so badly to reduce his suffering. There was a time when I might have agreed that was a worthy goal. Nobody likes suffering. At almost fifty I know I am better for having suffered. None of the great epiphanies in my life came in the midst of ease. I have never grown closer to God in comfort. Character doesn't come from getting what you want. Of all the things I can't imagine my life without, none of them were without hardship and discomfort. To quote The Princess Bride, "Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something."
The worst part may be that my uncle didn't choose this. It was chosen for him. He wasn't actually dying in an imminent sense until hospice got involved. He had some dementia, was still physically weak from successful cancer treatment and was probably over-medicated. Then he had an injury that made him unable to care for himself. His wife and daughter who are also in poor health couldn't care for him, so when his hospital time was up the doctors asked if they wanted him sent to a nursing home they didn't feel they could afford or hospice. There are other options, but you have to demand them and fight for them and spend money out of your own pocket. Hospice is free and oh, so easy.
On the first few days, when they took away all his medications, he was mentally sharper than he'd been in months. Just a week ago we were watching the birds out the window and he laughed when I made a joke and growled when a squirrel managed to get on to the bird feeder. Today he lays there looking translucent and taking the raspy, rattling breaths of the dying. He hasn't been awake for days. He may never be again.
I want to be indignant and bully my way to bedside and demand that they do better. I want to write my congressman and my hospital and my church and demand the WE do better. I'll probably do the latter, but the former is a battle my mom already lost and starting it back up will only create a fight and not a solution. Still, I'm ashamed as I sit there in the awkward quiet as we try not to upset the man we're killing. Ashamed of myself and my family and my society. Ashamed of the cult of death that believes that the way to end suffering is to kill the suffering.
I love you, mom. I won't let them do this to you.
And not only that, but we also glory in tribulations, knowing that tribulation produces perseverance.
Romans 5:3
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