My dad in September 2006 with our cat Peter.
I've been trying to decide if I'd rather be blind or deaf and find it's a toss up. I would really mourn the total loss of my hearing (since I am hearing impaired anyway) since I live for music, but blindness would be VERY difficult to bear. So I can understand why my dad feels as he does, losing his eyesight to MacD and glaucoma, and feeling so tired and weak all the time from just general ill health.
I was thinking a lot this morning about how it is that we can have such a hard time relating to someone wanting to die and doing everything possible to keep them from wanting to die. Perhaps because we're afraid that if we say it's OK to want to die people will take it into their own hands and kill themselves? OR that it's challenging something within ourselves? I probably need to read more about death and dying to understand this--at least in the context of geriatrics. But then I'm not sure I could handle what I read at this point.I can understand a friend's FIL's POV too--do not go gentle into that good night, "I am controlling this, it is not controlling me." He is dying from cancer and resisting going into hospice.
The context of this is that my dad, I think, is on his way out. Or least he'd like to be. It's hard for me to reconcile this shell of a man with the strong vigorous guy I know and love, who protected me, and who I still expect to protect me. I am always going to be his baby though I am now 47 to his 81. I miss the "old" Dad, the guy who was with my brother Ricky and me on a trip to New York (photo at left). This was in 1969.
I know I can't go back to those days but boy, do I miss them.
lin
1 comments:
Lin have you looked into 'in home hospice'?
Also our local hospice has 'Can Care' short for Cancer Care. That is for those who refuse to accept their life is ending but they give some services still, nurse visits, social worker coming to talk to them and family, making recommendations for things the Dr. can order and have Medicare pay for. (Versus if they were in full 'hospice in home' the Hospice would order stuff and get it taken care of i.e. oxygen, morphine, etc.).
I know all I want for my own relatives is that at least near the end they are not in pain and suffering. That kills me to see, them feeling awful and being unwell.
Hang in there.
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