Die Another Day

I used to think dementia would be better than a physical illness later in life. How fun would it be to not be able to remember you had that same ham sandwich yesterday for lunch? Each day would be an adventure, right? That’s only Stage 1. It gets a lot worse. In the final stages of her dementia, I looked into my Mom’s eyes, expecting some confusion, but saw nothing at all. She couldn’t do anything herself, just…existed. A hospice volunteer visited her room once a week, playing music and singing her favorite church hymns, Ave Maria and Amazing Grace. I wished her a quick exit. But that didn’t happen.

Another relative has cancer. It’s painful, and it’s terminal. No surgery will fix it. I want him to try every treatment possible to live. That means a lot of traveling to hospitals, scans, tests, chemotherapy, and then trying to recover from it all. He needs to balance quality time and quantity time. How will he do it? I don’t know.

I wished my Mom a quick exit. I want him to fight for every day. I know how that sounds.

My daughter’s friend lost her dad recently in an unexpected ATV crash. Four kids and another on the way. I used to stand on the sidelines of our kids’ soccer games, talking about life and how the team was doing. Her dad won’t be at the family’s Thanksgiving this year.

“Live each day like it’s your last.” But we still need to plan who in the family is hosting Thanksgiving. We could die later today, too. Then who cares who’s coming to Thanksgiving?

I feel like I’ve been surrounded by death lately, and I’m not sure how I feel about it.