It wasn't until I had a baby that I asked people about their birthing experiences. Birthing seemed mysterious to me before that. And even though I've had loved ones die before, I am now experiencing the death of someone very close to me--my mom, and similar to birthing stories, I find myself asking close friends and relatives about the experiences they had when their loved ones died. What can we expect? What specifically happened? How did you respond?
Of course, where our loved ones are concerned we want to do all we can to provide a peaceful end of life. Yet, there's a lot of mystery surrounding death--we can't live inside another person's body, spirit, or mind. We can listen, observe, touch to assess how our loved one is doing. We can consult experts in person, via articles, and over the phone. Yet, there's no way to understand it all, so we have to have faith that we are doing what we can to love and nurture our loved one until their final breath.
We also have to support each other as everyone meets the dying process differently. We all feel and express our emotions differently. For example, I am a real crier--I get very emotional and cry easily. There are others, I'm sure that internalize their emotions more, and those that may even resist facing the stark reality that death brings. Just like with our loved one, we can't fully get inside the heads, minds, and spirits of those who, like us, are experiencing the sad death.
So, I guess the best we can do is to do what we can. We can comfort one another in ways we know how. We can consult the experts as to how to provide the most comfort and care for our dying loved one. We can spend meaningful time with our loved one--time with gentle talk, touching, music, poems, stories, and silence. We can also nurture each other with good foods, looking through pictures of the good times, engaging in a positive distraction like a good show, walk, or shared meal.
Dying too is a part of life. Onward.
Mom's death evaded us for a long time. She had many near misses over the years including after the birth of her sixth child, after the death of her beloved brother, her botched kidney stone surgery, and then the stroke--each time she came back, but after the botched surgery, she didn't recover her full ability for self care or clarity, then when she had a stroke at 90, she didn't fully recovery her ability to talk. Yet she continued to live with her best capacity and under the care of many, but mostly dad. She had a healthy appetite up to her final days--lots of veggies and fruits. Then, in her final days, she stopped eating and drinking which spelled a fairly quick decline. In her final days, we held her hands, talked to her, and played lots of music. I wondered which song she would die to, and then six days after she stopped eating, she died during he song, "Long May She Run" by Neil Young. While sad, we were glad her suffering had come to an end as the last few days of her life included days of breathless suffering, but on the final day, she was at peace. Many came to visit in those final days--all of her closest friends and relatives came. Death is such a mystery. Yet, I know Mom is at peace. Onward.