| THIS IS A READ-ONLY ARCHIVE FROM THE SORABJI.COM MESSAGE BOARDS (1995-2016). |
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| By Stormy Thundercloud on Sunday, June 21, 1998 - 08:36 pm: |
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| By Whet on Sunday, June 21, 1998 - 10:48 pm: |
Let me apologize up front cause this is very dark post. Anything we go through now to me isn't as horrible as the deaths I'm about to describe so if you are upset easily by images of dispair I encourage you to skip this post entirely and go on to other issues. The only reason I mention this is to hopefully knock people, myself included, back into considering that the life and time we share with our friends now is most precious. Why do I now raise some hell about who I am and what my life is going to be about? Why do I refuse to just sit and accept without at least trying right or wrong? Cause what I'm going to describe is NOT how I am going to die in another 50-60 years. I've seen old people withered and wasted, living carcass's kept alive by government money and modern science. So joyous that even immediate family can't bear to bring themselves to acknowldged their lingering existance - much easier to forget and remember the good. How am I qualified to make such comments? I'm going through it now with my FOURTH grandparent. People that raised me as a child. My parents worked and every single summer was raised by my grandparents, sometimes more than just the summer. My only living grandparent, grandmother has alheizmers in the closing phases now. Can't talk, can't think, just sits there in her double diaper on a folded towel in a wheelchair with a seat belt, with her eyes closed, head leaning to one side constantly chewing if not babbling unintelligible noises that rise in a slow crecendo until she runs out of breath collapsing back into a heap. Whe we visit we call first, giving them time to clean her up a little cause the normal daily stench is unbearable for most. Earlier was the other grandmother who's liver slowly deterioriated, her skin turning yellow, her eyes turning yellow, but not until she had totally lost the ability to communicate and exist as anything other than a moaning writhing carcass. Before that a grandfather who got so old everything in his body wore out. His heart would stop beating, they had a pacemaker and a monitor attached, and sometimes his heart would stop and the alarm would sound for 5 minutes or more, until they finally heard it and came in with the crash cart, the needle to the heart to bring him back for another week or month until it happened again. After multiple times, lying there with no heartbeat until his brain cells died off, each time coming back less and less alive, my parents signed the DNR papers, and then he found peace. At least every now and then he could still recognize me as his grandson. None of the others can or did at that point and until you've looked into the eyes of someone that raised you and you're no longer recognized you won't understand that kind of emotional pain. One gift from God because of his faith and life committment to helping other people. That he kept some of his wits until the very end. Before that, my other grandfather, who died with prolonged cancer and tumors, stayed in long term intensive care for almost two years, reduced from a 6' man of men that could bend crowbars and break axe handles to a 78 pound skeleton, crying, weeping and begging to be released from the pain that consumed him from inside out, allowed to SMOKE in the hospital bed under doctor supervision, remove the oxygen mask, take a puff, cough up blood and lung tissue, nurse clean him up, take another gasp of oxygen, then another puff from the cig, repeating this over and over until he passed out or finished his cig - was at least something he still enjoyed, finally got so bad the last 6 months any minors were not allowed in the room at all, we just sat in the parking lot of the cancer hospital and wondered why the adults always came back so sad with red eyes. Life aint all that bad. Go out to someone you really care about and tell them. See what happens. |
| By -oDDBALL oDD- on Saturday, July 4, 1998 - 06:33 am: |
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| By Whet on Sunday, July 5, 1998 - 05:11 pm: |
Sometimes words just don't do it... So I'll just say hugs. :) |
| By Random on Friday, August 14, 1998 - 09:52 pm: |
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But, I knew the end was near when he had that look of someone who was just tired from living. The one that says I'm happy for every moment I have but I know I'm worn out and it is time to let go. |
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