A sacred death, a death with dignity

Four years ago, this day, my mom’s spirit left her earthly body. Despite my scientific belief that energy can neither be created nor destroyed and my mother’s energy lives within me, in the very helix of my DNA, I couldn’t stop myself from grieving. My grief was a complicated by my imperfections, my guilt for not being present in mind and spirit sooner, for not accepting her change from that of healthy woman—my mom, my anchor—to woman who was anxious and in pain, whose body was ravaged by cancer, followed by hemorrhagic stroke. Her change in appearance and personality happened so fast, less than a year from when we received her diagnosis of stage 4 cancer. I couldn’t adjust and be objective. As a trained nurse, I should have been better prepared for her care and decline….

Many of us healthcare providers talk about death with dignity in terms of DNR or do not resuscitate. Many healthcare friends even jokingly talk about jumping off a cruise ship when the time comes or falling in a ravine in the Grand Canyon. They discuss this in half jest and seriousness with their family and loved ones. Death with dignity is almost equated with a DNR. But often without much details as to why this is so. My mom, also did not dwell in this type of discussion.

Many people only know of the life prolonging powers of medicine and do not understand why DNR is so important. They seek healthcare in hopes of avoiding the inevitable death. You see, we all like stories of miraculous cures, and the stories about patients whose family’s were not brave enough to say goodbye, to give the gift of death with dignity, are left untold. We like giving hope and holding on to hope. We don’t want to give the gory details of what happens to those patients who missed the window of opportunity for a sacred death. Death can happen under the precision of a scalpel, and if that doesn’t do it, the hands of healthcare can prolong the decay of the flesh with fluids, tube feeds and ventilators. We don’t talk about how those patients who missed their opportunities for a dignified death, smell like rotten flesh in the hospital’s hallway, from bed sores that gets to their very bone because no matter how often you turn a patient to prevent bed sores, when death is imminent, despite the prolonging artificial measures, flesh and life function decays. They don’t talk about how families stop to visit because no mind is left to interact with and how the bodies are left for the healthcare workers to tend to on a daily basis, sometimes for years.

That horrible description above is not the story of my mom. Her death is sacred and as beautiful as the life she led. On the day before she was hospitalized for the last time, she called everyone on her phone and told us to come see her because she was dying.

The following evening she was admitted and brought to the hospital floor that she worked on as a nurse for the past 20 years. And when she closed her eyes (from what I suspect was a subdural hematoma) the doctor spoke to us about what we wanted to do. Do we transfer her to larger hospital where maybe they would do surgery, intubate her, and she may or may not wake up, and if she miraculously wakes up, she is paralyzed, in pain from metastatic cancer? Or do we simply allow her a graceful passing?

She gave us ten days, ten days to say goodbye. During her 10 days of passing, her coworkers and friends gathered around and cooked us food for every meal, in honor of the countless of times she has cooked meals for others in the past. I sat by her side, sang and played ukelele with the five chords that I just learned. She spent a lot of energy to make me learn how to play the piano well. I played those five chords in a new instrument (that I could bring to the hospital bedside). I played with an understanding of music, feeling the rhythm of life from the strings of my heart. I played knowing this was the last time I get to play for her. My brothers and sister and father took turns sitting by her side. A couple of those evenings, we called and video chatted with her mom, her brothers, sisters, nephews and nieces across the world, to share our sorrow and the experience of her slow passing. Her graceful passing allowed us to reminisce about our childhood and experiences with her—that time when she baked banana bread using a tin can and some fire wood that smelled like poop (since we didn’t own an oven). The banana bread was still so good and so many people loved it. Or that time when dad left us to make a better life in the US and when he returned without any cash, she had way more money than he could ever imagine from selling Avon Products.

On the tenth night, we gathered around and sang songs and had the kids play with her warm but listless hands. I remember her shallow breaths and when I left her side, I suspected it was for the last time. As I drove home past midnight, I was tempted to turn right back around, but I also knew I couldn’t take it. So my father said, he woke up from sleep that night at her bedside because he dreamt that she said his name and he cried and left her side to ask the staff to help, and when he returned, she was gone.

Like I said, my grief was complicated. I had to travel to get away from the routine, the feelings. I needed to create new neurons of happiness and connections. When I returned, I immersed myself in the FNP program to help me direct my sadness in something useful, that honors her life and energy.

I sat by her gravesite the other day and let the years wash over me. I prayed that I would live a worthy life, that I would take the finality of death to make my actions matter, that I would not get lost in the momentary anxieties, but rather be open to create and be directed by the infinite energy that is beyond my own finite mind. I prayed that one day I would also have a sacred death, a death with dignity.