Choice

Sometimes when when I share some of the stories that are seared into my brain with a friend I think, Oh! I should share this on clickmom and then I wonder…… Have I already shared this?

So, since this blog isn’t catalogued I will now share with you (possibly for the second or third time) the story of how my view of death by disease was forever written in stone by the devastating death of Mrs S

My dad had his own little firm. At some point he made his second man, Phil, his partner. From January to April my dad and Phil would have family members come in on saturdays to help out. (It was such a REWARD to make photocopies and answer phones for Dad) (Also, this was before computers) Phil’s mom was Mrs. S. Mrs. S was a well dressed, perfumed, meticulous makeup, freshly painted nails, just got hair done presenting woman. I marveled at her.

She got breast cancer and died from it. One day, not long after shenpassed, I was helping out in the office and I overheard Phil (agonizing) crying to my dad and confessing to him that Mrs. S had asked him to bring her pills to end her life. He couldn’t bring himself to do it, she was his mom, he couldn’t even believe that she had asked him to help her, and then two days later she wasn’t able to talk anymore and she lasts for about two torturous weeks (or some amount of time that was enough that he was sure she had suffered a great deal) and he was so incredibly guilt ridden that he had not helped his mom when she asked him to. After hearing Phil sobbing in pain like that I knew that I would never put my kids though it and I would take care of it myself should the time come, but also, that we, as a society, were totally fucked up by not allowing people to go on their own terms.

To this day I can not think about someone coming to the end of their life without reminding myself of Mrs. S., how she passed, and what it did to her son. Overhearing that conversation changed me. I heard a news story about a town (state?) where there was an effort to get every single person to make a detailed end of life plan saying what their wishes were before they were desperately ill. Almost every single person wanted not to be a burden and most importantly not to extend their suffering in any way. Amen.