Please Forgive Me Mom
You brought me into this world but, it is just wrong to me
that I would ever consider helping you to leave life.
Somehow,
I thought those thoughts and even though they were justified,
those thoughts still make me feel sick inside.
I still felt like your little kid, and
now your fate was in my hands. Life is so strange.
You developed Alzheimer’s or dementia or whatever they call it and I totally blame your nutrition. You were definitely clear however, that you wanted to join Dad in Heaven.
Doctors repeatedly talk to us about how it morally could be considered elder abuse to keep returning you to the hospital repeatedly for the same condition. It was never gonna get better.. The doctor suggested that it might be better to just let nature take its course upon the next urinary tract infection.
This is just not fair. Nothing in life prepares you. He was suggesting to just let my mom die. I started having nightmares.
How could I do that, how can I just watch my mother die. It was tearing me in two.
Cruel to be- kind means bring her by ambulance to the hospital over and over to be painfully catheterized and filled full of antibiotics that don’t really work very long at all.
Kind to be cruel- means perhaps the best decision is to grow up and as tough as it is, let her die.
Just as the doctors predicted, she soon developed another urinary tract infection and I knew what this meant. Little by little she would be overtaken by the infection in her life would slip away. It was so hard to watch.
The last time I saw mom, she squeezed my hand just as hard as she could and I bent over and whispered, “I know mom, I know.
If I was more spiritual in those days I would’ve helped her like that but that never happened. I’m sure she would’ve liked my efforts even if they were clumsy.. Instead, I did the only thing I could and rang for the nurse to give more pain pills..
Everyone knows that in life there are many bittersweet things.
I’ve always felt that when horrible things happen we are better able to see the beautiful things in life.
My mother was just a sweet simple lady just like your mom or anybody else’s mom. She wasn’t perfect — — — —
but who is perfect. None of us are perfect.
But she devoted all of the love she had in her life to my dad and us kids and just can’t get any better than that………
