Struggles Leaving for Palliative Care: My Wife’s Last Day at Home
My wife, Rosemary, passed away seven years ago after losing her courageous battle with cancer. She was a beautiful, kind, generous and loving person to all who had the pleasure of knowing her.
The cancer was continuing to spread, symptoms were becoming progressively worse, and it became obvious that her time on earth with us was quickly coming to an end. Our children were only 7 and 10 years old at the time.
Although that was seven years ago, over the past couple of months my mind has repeatedly returned to one specific day in Rosemary’s journey.
As her physical capabilities became more and more diminished, we had to obtain a special hospital bed for our living room. Then the hospital bed had to be moved upstairs to our bedroom. Eventually, we had to move to external palliative care.
I don’t know why, but I keep thinking about the day that Rosemary moved from our home into palliative care: That one day and its many unique experiences, thoughts, comments and reflections. These impressions are a combination of my personal observations and Rosemary’s comments to me in the days that followed as she reflected back on that pivotal day in her journey.
I had made arrangements with a medical transport organization to facilitate our move. Two staff from that organization arrived the next morning along with their transport vehicle.
I pulled them aside, explained the situation and asked if they minded going slowly and could they let her take her time since this was going to be an emotional transition for us. They were very supportive and offered to go at whatever pace we needed.
By this time in the disease’s progression, Rosemary could no longer walk. The staff took a gurney up to our bedroom and lifted her onto it from the hospital bed. They then proceeded to wrap her in a blanket and use four thick straps to secure her to the gurney for the trip down the stairwell and out to the waiting vehicle.
And thus began the long list of “lasts” for this day…
As they lifted up the gurney, she turned to me and said, “This is the last time I will ever be in our bedroom.”
As we moved into the upstairs hallway she said goodbye to each of the children’s empty bedrooms, where so many special and loving memories had been made.
We have a curve two-thirds of the way down our stairwell. Guess what? Gurneys don’t do corners. They had to tilt the gurney almost upright to rotate it around the corner and then tilt it down again for the last third of the descent, all done with a person on it. Rose was not enjoying the ride, yet was resigned to its necessity.
They stopped at the bottom of the stairs for a rest. It so happened that this left Rose positioned right in front of our latest splash of assorted family photos in the living room which Rose had nicely mounted in six frames, each nicely arranged on the wall.
The pictures seemed to capture our family at one point in time, a time about eight months prior when all of us were happy and we believed (hoped) we had a future together.
In fact, those photos had been taken immediately after Rose had received an initial tentative diagnosis of a possible return of the cancer for a second battle. That news meant, in Rose logic, that it was time for an immediate family photo shoot.
Why? Because hair falls out quickly once chemotherapy treatments begin and also, who knew what the eventual prognosis might be.
Rose tried to be brave, but I could tell otherwise just by looking at her watery eyes and where her eyes were looking.
She was scanning the various elements around our living room… the pictures we brought back from our trip to Africa… the photo of a past sunset across the lake at our family cottage up north…
And then her gaze stopped at the cross-stitch that she had worked on steadily for two months, a number of years ago, in order to complete it in time to give it to her Mom for Mother’s Day. It had the words of the entire 23rd Psalm cross-stitched into it, a stream running through a lovely meadow, sheep, and a fancy border stitched between the contents and the actual golden wood frame surrounding it.
It was about 2.5 feet tall by 1.5 feet wide… it had been a labour of love for her for her Mom. It had been returned to Rose after her Mom succumbed to cancer in 2001.
Rose nodded to the staff that it was okay to continue moving her through the house…
As she was rolled through the rest of our living room, her eyes paused at the various photo collages she had put together a few months ago. Each collage depicted a variety of pictures of proud parents with our young children at various early stages of growth.
As she went through the hallway towards the front door, I could see her eyes pausing on each photo in the hallway.
This is where we had hung pictures of past family photo shoots when we were all younger and some group photos from our family Disney trip that we took a few months ago for the sole purpose of making family memories while there was still time to do so.
Of course, Rose, who was our family photo selector, framer and hanger, had ensured that we would have constant reminders of these events we had spent together, about the great times we had experienced as a family, and these reminders remain with us to this day.
Rose and I had discussed such strategies six months prior to this last day at our house. Rose and I were both planners. We liked to talk about possible contingencies in case they might occur.
And with the recurrence of cancer, and after a few months of treatments, it became very real to both of us that we might not win this second battle. Therefore, planning was a very prudent and practical necessity. Hence the family photo shoots, the framing of many family event pics, the major family trip in the middle of the sickness and treatments, etc.
As we passed the kitchen, it was also difficult for her but for different reasons (which she would tell me a few days later). Her not being able to prepare meals for our family, which had started awhile earlier, was representative to Rose of her inability to take care of her family’s needs and she was reminded of this as she passed by the kitchen.
Out the front door we went, down the outside steps and onto the driveway.
The workers stopped here to allow Rose some time.
She gazed back at our house, the building, the structure. She would never again see it. She would never again step foot in it. She said as much at the time.
Never again would our family be together under our roof, playing together and enjoying each others’ company.
No more working on projects together, helping with homework, having conversations and enjoying each person’s unique sense of humour. No more family game nights. No more going to church together. No more helping in service projects together. And no more “being home.”
She could no longer hold back the tears; who could.
The staff gave her space and let her take her time; as long as she needed.
When she was ready, they opened the back doors of the medical transport van, lifted her gurney up, rolled her inside and secured the unit to the van to hold it in place during transport.
The gurney was positioned so that Rose was looking out the back of the vehicle. I got in to ride with her to Lisaard House (an excellent local palliative care facility).
As the van drove out our driveway and down our street, you have no idea what it was like on this day to see our house getting further and further away, smaller and smaller in the distance.
As we made our way onto the expressway and were driving along, Rose talked to me about how if she had been facing the front of the vehicle, she would be looking at where she was going, where she was heading, what was ahead for her. But instead, all she was seeing was everything that she was leaving behind.
There were large windows on all four sides of this van. She was very familiar with all of the sights she was seeing as we drove through the city. She knew all of these landmarks, these buildings, these exits that led to roads that led to places of many previous life experiences, all of which she would never experience again.
She was commenting to me about how everything that she was seeing now out the windows, she would never see again. Never. As I held her hand, we sat there for a moment letting that thought sink in for both of us…
As we both gazed out the window and as images continued to fly by… it was difficult to focus with watery eyes…
Her next comments were about all of the other cars that were driving past us; cars and cars and cars. She lamented, “They rush here and there in a hurry, consumed in their normal lives. Don’t they know I’m dying here.”
We eventually arrived at Lisaard House where they took excellent care of Rosemary for the last 33 days of her life.
Lisaard House then became our family meeting place after school and evenings and weekends for Rose’s final month.
Her comments and my observations of that one pivotal day remain vivid in my memory even these years later — when she was forced by failing health to leave our home and all of its memories and what it represented of our family together, and endure the slow, cruel, indignant degradation of her capabilities while she waited to meet her Lord.
I could go on, but it was the surreal impressions of that one day which have been so recurrent of late in my mind that I felt I needed to write them down in more detail than I had originally penned on Rosemary’s website during the cancer battles.
I don’t know why. Perhaps it’s just therapeutic for me.
Thanks for listening.
Doug
Next writings in this series about Rosemary:
