In the "middle years", which I define as thirty to fifty years of age, I came to know Death all too well. My aunt, who had raised me, spent two years dying of cancer. I went home the last six months and nursed her through her final time.I listened to her plead for Death to come to her. I listened to her plead for me to end her life. I listened to her beg and grovel to the doctor to help her die - to no avail.
I had to agree with her repeated plea, "You wouldn't let a dog suffer like this!" As the pain continued to grow worse, one night I even tried to overdose her on morphine. She slept well for the night....and woke up to plead again. I learned that night that it was not my action to take. I talked to the doctor, for I was shattered by the guilt of my attempt. He suggested that I leave water and a full bottle of her oral medication beside her bed and let her make the decision. I did so and told her it was there. She did not take the pills...
Her two boys, twelve and fourteen, were handled so very badly. They were not directly told that their mother had died, they came down the stairs to find an empty bed where she had been. Somehow, in the grief and ugliness of the undertaker coming and the phone calls to be made, no one thought to be with them. A horrible memory for all of us.
I don't think I ever have, or ever will, do anything harder than to drive my beloved into the hills overlooking the Santa Clara Valley and tell her that she was going to die. She was thirty years old. ...As was I.
Following this nightmare, Death was real to me ... all too real! I knew his tricks, his cruelities. I hated Death with a vengeance and fury that ate at me. With help, I learned to live again and go on with my life. Yet, even today, forty years later, I dream of her periodically and think of her often.
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