I woke up this morning with a heavy heart. A friend passed away last night, ending a difficult battle with a horrible degenerative disease. Out of love and respect for her partner, whom I know reads my blogs, I will only publicly comment on how much I admired her love and her strength throughout this entire heartbreaking ordeal. It has been an example of unwavering love and devotion for her partner up until the very last day.

The journey for which we are all destined to travel is the road that brings us to the end of our life.  For some the journey will be much shorter than others. Only the Universe can know which road will be ours to take. It has weighed heavy on my mind of late, especially since I placed my mother into her memory care home.

In my work and now with my constant visits to my moms place, I every day see people in the end stages of Alzheimer’s. They are confined to beds and wheel chairs,  can’t communicate, feed themselves or follow conversation.  They are trapped in a body with no way out except for the sweet release of death.

It is an end of life experience that chills me to the bone with worry that this will one day be the fate of my mother. I never feel more helpless in my care planning for my mother than to know that I have no control over offering her choices in how she will die.  Her mind is now too far gone for consent, so legally we just have to wait and watch and witness her constant decline. It is such a cruel consequence to the disease.

One recent Sunday I picked my mom up to take her on an errand with me to a Board and Care home where I had placed a hospice patient.  I was alerted by the administrator of the home that my client was actively dying, so I wanted to take some pie and pastries for them to have on hand to offer visitors and family.

As we were driving Mom asked me repeatedly where we were going.  I would reply that we were going to quickly drop something off to a friend and left it at that. I was trying not to bring a negative aspect to our visit, so I left out the part that my friend was ill. As expected, Mom continued to ask the same question every few minutes, so in an effort to steer her in a different direction, I finally told her that my friend was dying. Mom turned to look at me and said “Oh I am so sorry, how sad.” I replied that yes it was sad but that this woman had lived a good long life.  Mom asked was she sick and how old was she and I told her, “Yes she is sick and she is eighty-five.” Mom said, “Oh well that is a good long life, but it is still sad”, and I readily agreed.

Then my Mother asked, “Why does that happen to people?” When I asked what she meant by that she said, “Why do people have to get sick, why can’t they just die?” I of course answered that sometimes they do, but typically she is correct, people usually get sick before they die.

My mother never ceases to amaze me at times like these, as I am bewildered that she can be so lost in her memory one minute, barely able to construct a sentence, and pop into having a proper and thoughtful conversation the next. When this presents itself I usually try to take advantage of having meaningful talks with mom.

So I continued in this vein and asked. “Mom do you ever think about dying?” She replied that she doesn’t now but she is sure she did once upon a time. I laughed and said,” Well I guess it is good you don’t think about it anymore.” Mom had a thoughtful expression on her face and said, “That’s right. There is nothing you can do about it. One day I will wake up and then I will be gone. That is just the way it is.” I could feel the tears starting to well in my eyes and I thought to myself, I hope it goes just that quickly mom, I really hope so.