A Pause Before Dying…
How my mom and I finally found peace together.
Her breathing was jagged, as if at any moment it could simply stop. Somehow though, it kept going like her body didn’t know how to shut itself down, a default setting hardwired for survival.
“That’s called the death rattle,” Betty, the nurse’s aide, pointed out as she covered my mom’s cold, bare foot with a warm blanket. Betty was one of the kindest human beings I had ever met.
Weeks had passed, and while conscious, my mom had pushed away any food or water, refusing either for fear it would cause her to linger in this state longer.
Her pain was so intense, that even after she lost consciousness, she moaned and thrashed as if tortured, and the hospice nurses would arrive then retreat out the front door, leaving me to care for her for the other 23.5 hours of the day, and that’s when I hired Betty.
I once asked the hospice nurse if she could increase my mom’s morphine dose. “It might stop her breathing if we do that,” she said while stepping into her car and closing its door. I stood in the driveway trying to contemplate her logic before deciding there was none.
How strange it is that stopping a person’s breathing when death is imminent is more of an ethical issue versus allowing the unfathomable pain to…
