I’m 57.
Ive cared for and been present at the following deaths;
Father....brain cancer...same as this girls.....64....hospice center...I watched my dad struggle through the death rattle for days (most folks don’t last the nite)given his supreme athleticism even though the tumour was devouring cerebral tissue hourly...like an all consuming nebula...I thought about the pillow honestly but knew any doc would know instantly from eye capillary ruptures.....you just want their struggle to end...I did not find it as beautiful or peaceful as some here think
Mother....mass in lungs and elsewhere...started ovaries.. 77...home hospice...chemo is truly poison...brutal brutal.....for nothing
Grandmother......mass in lungs etc,........88...hospital....quick
Grandmother......brain tumour.......90....home hospice...went to sleep...peaceful
Father in law.....bone cancer.....81....home hospice.....extreme pain....worst I ever witnessed....three war combat vet.....suffered even with major opiate goodies
Mother in law.....pheocrysetoma and congestive heart failure 75...hospital....had been expected to live
I was in charge of parents hospice as POA in Living Will....spent all night every night up to bitter end with my own parents....months....
This notion many are drugged to death at final stage is not true...I have never seen this in hospice family care and in fact hospitals do everything to not appear that way
Pain meds of course increase in dose for final stage uncle charlie victims but that isn’t what kills them
Unless its brain cancer....which kills life sustaining motor tissue
Folks die of suffocating....pneumonia...struggling to breath....heart gives out
Or liver or kidneys fail
Or less frequently systemic depths...
That’s it....trust me...
Now in nursing homes with no family around or in public hospitals with indifferent care...perhaps
God bless you for the love and devotion to your family. It is never easy for those of us in such a position to watch our loved ones suffer and die.
The beauty I speak of in death is made of such acts of loving commitment as this. Not all family members would do so much.
I knew a woman personally-she was in her thirties, physically attractive, very healthy, married with children when discovered she had breast cancer. She was not terminal, but due to vanity, she did not wish to have her breasts removed. This woman was not a Christian. She traveled to So. America in order to see a “doctor” who could heal her using the “dark arts”. When she died her husband was not at bedside. He didn’t want to be there.
On the last day of one of our loved ones final stage of cancer, we sang to him. He said my spouses name then passed away. The privilege of providing some form of comfort and reassurance—these expressions of love are what I mean when I describe the “beauty” in death.
Death is ugly. We were not originally designed to experience death, so it is natural that we not only hate it, but it causes us profound sadness and grief to watch our loved ones endure such suffering.
I’m not being sentimental or romanticizing death. To be surrounded by loved ones in your final moments before stepping into the presence of God is truly a blessing....and a beautiful kind of pain.