The Last Weeks of Life: What's It Like?

Every passing is different, and yet, there’s something universal about those final days, hours, and moments.

Most people don’t want to talk about this, and now, most by far, do not have an intimate, up-close experience with death.

I needed to know how to do this. How to be there, how to incorporate this monumental event into my being.

This is what I wrote a few weeks before my mother passed away:

I’m on this euphoric high. It’s not real, I can tell. I’m not on any drugs, but it’s that out-of-body feeling. I’m excited, hesitant and nervous about everything. Walking around feels different, like the balls of my feet are the only parts of me touching the ground. I can’t stop thinking. I need to keep moving. If I slow down everything will fly off the earth.

What will I do? How do I start? I don’t think I can handle more changes. I’m leery of what’s next. I’m thinking about the funeral, the trip to Georgia. I see the cemetery, the gravesite, the mound of orange dirt, the chairs, and the green tent. I see me, shaking hands, a long line of people streaming out in front of me.

I’ve been in this cocoon for so long, these walls are so familiar. I leap ahead to her actual death. Me, there, next to her—will she wake up? Say something? Scream? Will she grab me? Will she just fade away, not saying anything?

During those last days, I kept one book nearby: How We Die by Dr. Nuland. It doesn’t sound like a happy book, and maybe it’s not, but when you need this information, you really need it.
This book became my practical template for what I was about to face. He writes of how we view death in our modern culture. We have to die from a disease now, not old age or because it’s our time. They used to call it “a natural death,” or he died from “complications.”

We’re into blame nowadays.
We think we have to pin everything on something, but life (and death) doesn’t cooperate. It’s complex, ambiguous, and all piled on top of each other like a plate of food from a church homecoming dinner. Forget trying to differentiate the ambrosia from the sweet potato casserole.

As my mother neared the end of her life, I was too tired to blame--nothing like three years of front-line caregiving to wear a person completely out. I read Dr. Nuland’s words about the end of Alzheimer’s. So much of it, I had already experienced. It was as though he were my fortune telling and my trusting palm laid open on the table.

I took deep breath after deep breath wondering how much longer. When someone’s 92, no long eating, barely swallowing, and even if you resuscitate them, what would you bring them back to? She’d still have Alzheimer’s; her body would still be wracked with the end stages of Parkinson’s. No feeding tube or shocking of her heart would change those facts.

Mother’s actual death took about three weeks.
Three of the longest weeks of my life.

Mother was in a coma and couldn’t be aroused without great effort, and then, only to look at me blurry with a backdrop of panic.
After saying my good-byes and making sure that each family member had that opportunity as well, and after I called the Chaplin, and say the Psalms, I stopped trying to rouse her.
I had to do all those things—my checklist. I made as many funeral arrangements as possible, and then it was time to be quiet. Hospice nurses came a few times to take her vitals, but I sent the bathers away.

It was just my mother and me most days.
I let my family go on with their lives.
Ironically, it rained for two straight weeks.
Good ole' Florida rain. Buckets.

I chose against a feeding tube.

This is a family and personal choice, and I don’t think I could have stuck to my decision if hospice had not assured me that this is humane, and that allowing the body to naturally shut down is a valid choice.

I watched every twitch, was she in pain? Not that I could tell.
I bathed her face and hands, swabbed the inside of her mouth with Vaseline. I kept her room quiet, cleaned and decluttered. We were in death-mode, and as unappealing as that sounds, it felt like the right thing to do.

I felt this incredible barometric pressure. No relief. I’d never paced so much in my life. Was I making the right decisions? Should I call 911 and scream, “Save her!” Or do I sit here, quiet, calm, and allow this to happen?

I chose to allow and the pressure lifted.

I found my own sense of closure.
I needed this time.
I needed this low pressure, this finishing of duties, this still and quiet room.
This was the end of a life, and that is profound and sacred.

I wrote hourly.
Stroked her hair, sat beside her, and waited.

~Carol D. O'Dell
Author of Mothering Mother: A Daughter's Humorous and Heartbreaking Memoir,
available on Amazon and in most bookstores

Kunati Publishing

Care Giving--Care Receiving

We've now turned the words "Care Giver" into a compound word.
Caregiver or caregiving is now written as one word.
Two words smeared together. Apropos. Two lives smeared together.

A Jackson Pollack painting is a great metaphor for Alzheimer's--layers of chaos--some beautiful, others haunting.

I wrote in my book, MOTHERING MOTHER that I thought that caregiving was such a sterile term. Mother has bonded well with her child makes me want to ask if bail has been posted.

I used to teach my daughters that family was an acronym for "Father and Mother, I Love You." It sounded really sweet when they were four and five years old.... Now they roll their eyes and give me a smirk.

Now I have a new word--Care Receiver.It's a two-worder. It looks funny as one word:Carereceiver. Care-receiver.

I prefer, "Loved One."

I'd like to be referred to as the loved one--the one who is loved.

Giving and receiving are reciprocal terms.Someone smiles, the other tears...or just sighs.
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Carol D. O'Dell, author of Mothering Mother, available at Amazon

Mothering Mother--The Truth Behind the Book

Mothering Mother is my first book. It's my first book published, not the first book I wrote. Like most writers, I have a couple of "dry runs" in the desk drawer. Mothering Mother was published first because I needed to understand myself and my role as daughter, mother, wife and woman. And if I needed it, I knew others did as well.
After seven years of writing and publishing, my own artistic journey was put on hold as my mother moved in. Caregiving is all encompassing and I didn't have enough brain cells to create fiction. So, I did what an artist does.
I turned my surrounding, my present condition into my art. Artists have to create. Boundaries create channels for energy. What I thought was a set back to my writing and my artist self turned out not to be a set back after all.
It wasn't easy either. Writing (or eating, bathing, having a life whatsoever) wasn't easy around my mother. She could suck the air out of tornado. I had to fight for any moment for myself.

I wrote in snatches for over two years--I'd run to the computer and type in a few lines. I'd write on the back of an envelope and stuff in my pocket. I wrote in my thoughts. The irony was that I was too tired to edit my thoughts. I told the truth--the raw, honest, gutsy, imperfect truth. Because I was too exhausted and frustrated not to.

Artists struggle with how to create art in the midst of life and reponsibilities. We struggle with how to tell, to show the truth. We struggle with how to be authentic and how to create beauty, clarity, flow and insight. We do that best when we don't (or can't) get in our own way.
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