Dec 07 2008
Normal Behavior in the Last Days
It was the end of life for my grandmother who made it to almost 93 years old. We knew what to do. She had been slowly declining over the past three years and prior to that she was very clear about her wishes for when it was her time. She spent her last three years in a nursing home due to increasing dementia and a significant decline in physical abilities.
Her last week started with a phone call from the nursing home on a Saturday. I was her legal guardian and they called to tell me she was not doing well. I went to see her Sunday morning and they told me that she was perky, had just eaten breakfast and was now taking a nap. The inevitable delayed I thought. I didn’t wake her up because I didn’t want to disturb her and so I checked on her and then left after a few minutes.
By Monday morning, she was again relatively unresponsive. They called her an ambulance and I met her at the hospital. One look at my grandmother coming out of the ambulance and I knew it was time. I called my mother and sisters to come and be with her because it was clear, she had hours or days, but she would not return to the nursing home.
One thing my grandmother was always very clear about was that she thought dying alone “was pathetic” and she did not want to be alone. She had two daughters, 6 granddaughters, one grandson, 5 great granddaughters and 3 great grandsons - plus 8 remaining siblings, nieces, nephews, etc. There was no reason for her to be alone.
It was amazing the way some of our family pulled together the last few days, and scary how the rest of the family pulled apart.
We requested a catholic priest to come a do a sacrament of the sick. She was very agitated prior to this and seemed to calm down after. She was always clear with me that I’d better remember to call a priest. She pulled no punches, call a priest because that’s what you do. Don’t forget.
My sisters, mother and I all held a vigil for the next 48 hours, taking turns sitting by her bedside and fielding phone calls from our two cousins. This is where the abnormal behavior starts.
I got asked why we weren’t trying dialysis. If they knew my grandmother at all (which they claimed to) they would know that she wanted no heroic measures done, in fact she had been ready to go for years and was waiting out her time. They kept calling with their suggestions to prolong her life even though we continually told them, it is time, we’re here with her and we are helping her along. Not once did they ask how we were holding up, not once did they say thank you.
What was most disturbing was her older daughter’s actions, my aunt, my mother’s older sister. She, who “went every day to see her mother at the nursing home” (yeah, sure she did), decided that it wasn’t important enough to come home from vacation to be there with her mother. She didn’t call my mother (her only sibling) and offer support although she was constantly on the phone with my crazy 40 something year old cousin who calls her mother 10 times a day to ask her questions.
We kept thinking my aunt and uncle were coming home to be with us, to be there for my grandmother her last few days. Her two daughters (when they finally stopped drinking wine enough to call us) were at first “of course they are coming home” to “they don’t want to share in the death experience” to “why would you be upset with my parents?”, made the funeral a fiasco to say the least.
I was chastised because her siblings all knew who I was at the funeral but didn’t know my cousins. I was asked why my mother didn’t pick my cousin up at the airport (she was busy holding her dying mother’s hand and making all the funeral arrangements) and why we bothered to talk with their sister in law in Texas (she called me every night when she knew me and my grandmother were alone). Hatred and guilt ran rampant throughout that week and beyond.
I didn’t lose my grandmother that week, I lost my two cousins and my aunt and uncle too. Not once did they thank me but they did ask about her last 400 $ in her bank account, this from the aunt who goes on a number of vacations a year. Nothing but money talk and about how tired they were from their vacation.
I didn’t want a medal and I would have done exactly the same thing whether I was my grandmother’s last living relative on earth or one of the many that I am. Her brother said it best when he asked, “Did you see her this week?” and I told him, “I never left her”. He said, “Of course you didn’t. Thank you for taking such good care of our sister. We all knew that she was taken care of because she had you in her life”. Thank you.
It wasn’t out of duty that I was there for my grandmother, it was because she was my friend and we were deeply connected to each other. In her better days I would take her to breakfast and grocery shopping because I wanted to. We had fun together, my grandmother and I, and I never did anything because I felt I had to. I think that is what made the difference. I never saw her as an obligation but as a link to my past and a way to learn about who I am as a person. Maybe I am different than some, but I hope not. I can’t understand why people do not embrace the elders in their lives.
I didn’t want to “share in the death experience” either, really. But I would have done anything for my grandmother as she would have for me. Her request was to not die alone and I wasn’t going to let her, no matter what the toll this took on me.
She is now safe in the hands of a God that she fiercely believed in. I feel her with me sometimes, riding passenger with me in my car as she often did. She’d be mad at me for crying and would tell me to just stop it. “I’m old and I’m ready. Don’t cry for me”. She always said this but it doesn’t seem to matter. To me she wasn’t old, she was my friend and I still miss her very much.
