Embracing Eternity

Eonia I Mnimi (Eternal Memory) – Greek Orthodox Funeral Blessing

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Sunset approaching after the storm, Falmouth, MA

“Have you ever seen anyone die before?” my cousin asked me, from across the bed.

“Sure I have, plenty of times,” I answered.

We were flanking her father, my uncle (really, my mother’s cousin, but extended Greek families are complicated; suffice it to say that our families are very close). He had just taken his last breath.

*****

My uncle had been declining for several years with Lewy Body Dementia, and it had been accelerating over the past year or so. It was stealing him away, his mind anyway, though until lately his body remained strong. He wasn’t even on any medications, except the Exelon patch and Namenda to slow the dementia, remarkable for his 88 years. Last fall he had an “episode” for which he was hospitalized, and his doctors indicated that it was likely progression of his disease; so from then on, he had been cared for with hospice assistance. His death was certainly not imminent, within days or weeks, as one usually thinks with hospice involvement, but it was inevitable. There was not much to do from a palliative point-of-view, there simply wasn’t anything else to add to or to enhance his care. But as he declined, his family— especially my cousin — were going to face some hard choices about how best to care for him. The resources in the home, even with hospice and aides to help in his care, were rapidly becoming inadequate. As it turned out, they did not have to worry any more about breaking the promise they made to him.

*****

That afternoon I went to see my uncle, who had been living with my cousin for the past few years. I had been texting and emailing with her over the prior week, after he had another “episode”—this time more severe, like a seizure or even a stroke, from which he was not waking. He had not had anything to eat or drink for about a week, and had stopped voiding for the past day or so. He would rouse slightly, then drift back to sleep. She indicated that his breathing had started to become irregular at times, with long pauses. He had small doses of morphine and ativan sublingually to ease his breathing, though it is hard to say if those tiny doses did much, or how much was even absorbed.

When I walked in to the room with her, to sit for a while and keep him — and her — company, the breathing pattern was immediately recognizable to me. It was the classic, end-stage pattern of Cheyne-Stokes respirations, the crescendo-decrescendo pattern punctuated by apnea, pauses ranging from 10 seconds to nearly a minute, before the whole pattern repeated. He was not in any discomfort, there was no distress. It bothered us more than him. It also meant that the end was coming soon, some time in the next hours. Continue reading

In a Blink: ‘The Diagnosis Is Cancer’

“Life changes in the instant. The ordinary instant.” -Joan Didion

“Maybe that’s what life is…a wink of the eye and winking stars.” -Jack Kerouac

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Sunrise, Plum Island/Newbury, Massachusetts (November 2011)

Life changes in a blink. A misstep, an accident, being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The seconds and even microseconds seem an eternity. Nothing will ever be the same from that moment. Everything that happens in that instant, flash, blink,  changes the whole world, your whole world, and you can never go back.

A few weeks ago I was in an automobile accident, my friend was driving. It was on a highway, at speed, involving two other cars besides ours. Amazingly, no one was hurt (I assume this, since the culprit who caused the wreck kept right on going and never stopped). The cars were damaged, my friend’s car took the worst of it. It is in the shop so that it can be fixed up, as good as new. All of this happened in a blink, an instant. Too fast to even register what was happening. Our plans for the day were shattered. My friend will be dealing with this for months, by the time all the repairs are done, bills paid, insurance adjusted. But cars can be fixed, as good as new. This is what got me thinking.

Injury, accidents and trauma, illness represent a nearly universal experience. No one is spared, Continue reading