NHPCO NewsLine Summer 2020 - 40

continued

diary and happily shared her
abundant commentary with us.
She was grateful to be around
people who not only took them
seriously but with whom she
could discuss their singular
nature. "It isn't the morphine,
then?" she asked when we first
broached the topic, relieved to
know that experiences that
mattered to her were not just
drug-induced hallucinations. And
after pleading with me not to
su¬garcoat what was happening
to her, she added, "So there is a
pattern to this thing? Being bossy
and inquisitive, I am going to ask
you a hard question: Is there any
way of knowing where on this
graph I am?" She had realized
that there was a connection
between dream frequency on the
one hand and one's closeness to
the end on the other, so there
was no stopping her analytical
mind from trying to identify a
logic to the changing patterns of
her dreams. Accustomed to
managing lives from a young age,
she was now working on
managing her last moments,
including anticipating her time of
death.
As her condition worsened, she
increasingly spoke of death as
deliverance, so much and so often
that her grown children became
uncomfortable, asking her to
refrain from mentioning it in their
presence. I could not blame them.
Here was the mother they
cherished, who was talking about
her death, which was also their
loss, as something to scratch off
her to do list. It felt to them like

40

Newsline / Summer 2020

she was discussing her pre-death
dreams as if she were conducting
a laboratory experiment.
I knew better than to mistake this
obsession with death and dying
for cheap morbidity. Patricia had
spent her life taking care of
others. She had tended to her
dying father at an age when most
kids are preoccupied with
fantasies about running away or
stealing a smoke; she had lived
through the war, the rationing
system, the anxiety of not
knowing whether her fi¬ancé
would survive his armed service
to the country; and she had
raised kids in a household where
she'd had to "wear the pants."
Having spent a lifetime managing
others, she was now preparing for
her own exit, as much for her sake
as for theirs. After all, only the
unexpected can be traumatizing,
so prepar¬ing herself for death
was one way of averting trauma,
for herself as well as for her loved
ones. Patricia had spent her life
worrying about them, and she
was not about to suddenly
change course at its end. If
anything, people's character
traits get more pro¬nounced with
age. The following passage that
she once read to me from her
diary illustrates this best: "I am of
no use to anyone now, I hate to
think that. I have to get help with
stuff and it will only get worse, I
am sure. So that is why I am
saying let's get on with it. I dearly
love all the ones that are still
here, but I can't do anything for
any of them, and it is too bad
that they have to bother about

me. So this morning, I'd like to cry
but I don't. I'd like to have my
mother tell me it is ok. I'd like to
wake up and walk up to Chuck
[her husband] and take him by
the hand and walk into the
eternal sunset, but that is
another story, another breath,
another day."
Patricia was alternating between
fear of the unknown and a sense
of defeat, disguising both under a
veneer of casualness she did not
truly feel. It was a facade meant
to reassure herself as well as
others. After all, she was not one
to draw attention to her troubles.
"Everyone has problems," she
would say. "I would never go
down the hall and complain,
because there is always someone
worse off than I am."
Certainly, there were extreme
episodes of breathlessness that
would coincide with her feeling
utterly dejected and plead¬ing for
a swift death, but until the last
week of life, these pleas were
more cries of exasperation than
of conviction. On her deathbed,
several days before the end, she
admitted as much: "You try your
darndest to get better because
so many people depend on you,
but now I am content to just
leave everything. That started
just recently." This was also when
she somehow found the strength
to remember and recite Hamlet's
famous soliloquy: "To die, to
sleep. To sleep, perchance to
dream-ay, there's the rub. For in
that sleep of death what dreams
may come."
NHPCO NewsLine Summer 2020

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