Thoughts on the Act of Dying

I am the youngest sibling of four. My nearest brother was eight years older than myself. I was an "oops" baby. I was equal parts toy, gullible believer in magic tricks, and cheap entertainment for my brothers. My sister was ten years my senior. She was tall and lean and graceful, and didn't have much time to mess with me. She was busy with school, sports, horses, cowboys and watching rodeos.

In 2005 my sister had come to visit to meet my daughter. While she was visiting, she told me she thought something was wrong. I brought her to my doctor, who ran tests and found that she had stage 4 ovarian cancer. They took out as much as they could, but it was everywhere. Within a month of that diagnosis, she died. It was diagnosed too late.

After she learned what her choices were for treatment, she decided not to receive any. They might have given her two to four months of life, most of which would have been in the hospital. She stayed in the hospital until the end.

My sister didn't have any of her malas with her, so I brought her the one set I had, which my daughter had chosen, for my sister, it seemed.

A month before, I had been in China to adopt my daughter. It was lunar new year time, and there were so many amazing things going on around us.

We were in Guangzhou, and walked through temple grounds, rang the big bell for good luck, and then walked through the tiny shop inside the temple itself. I wore my daughter against my chest everywhere we went, and she was usually content to rest there and look around. In that shop, however, she suddenly leaned down and took ahold of a wooden mala. She was very determined, and it was so unusual for her to reach for anything that I bought it.

When my sister needed a mala, I brought her the one my daughter had chosen. It somehow seemed meant for her.

A large part of my life plan went with my sister when she died. She was my friend, my touchstone, a mirror that reflected back truth about our upbringing, of us both being survivors of SA, and the rage that lived in each of us. She had found a way through the rage, with meditation and breathing and being as present as possible in the moment. I miss her still.

My closest brother in age died after a four years long and complicated decline after a severe stroke. Aphasia left him without words. His frustration and anger were palpable. He had once wanted to be a minister, but my mother had flat out told him he couldn't do that. That he needed a real education. I think that was his calling. I think he would have been an amazing minister. I'm sorry that his path was denied.

Now my remaining brother has died from glioblastoma, after two years of surgeries and treatments and the battle to stay ahead of the brain tumor. It wasn't a wasted two years, but the diagnosis was always terminal, no matter the treatment. Which brought him to the inevitable place of being bedridden and withdrawn from the life around him.

When he was first diagnosed, he told me the tumor was growing where sympathy and empathy are located. He thought that was why there was room for the tumor to grow, because he had neither sympathy nor empathy. Dry humor for certain.

When our sister died, we gathered together at a friend's home, and my daughter found my brother and sat on his lap. This was not usual behavior for her. She drank tiny drops of wine from his finger tip and smiled.

He and my sister in law lost a son a few months after our sister had died. It was unbearable, that loss. After the service, people gathered at my brother's ranch and my daughter rarely left his side. She would bring him flowers she'd picked. She leaned against his leg and drank from her sippy cup. At one point, he stood up and asked her if she'd like a ride on the tractor. She nodded, and off they went. That was the cementing of their bond, and we made sure to visit once or twice a year so that my daughter could ride on the quad and help check sprinklers in the orchard, (sometimes in her pink tutu and rubber boots) feed carrots to the neighbor's horses, and run free.

Watching him experience pain, and the loss of all the parts of himself that made him the strong, generous, sarcastic man that walked through life with such determination was so difficult. He was a presence.

After watching the process of dying so closely, I have realized that I don't want my daughter to have to watch this happen to me. To hover and watch and wait as the "me" of me seeps away. I also know that every death is different, and I can't predict anything about this life and its twists and turns.

All that said, there is a point when release from this life seems like the kindest thing for the dying person. Release from pain, from the strange limbo of half waking and half sleeping. But also, it is a kindness for those who wait and comfort and care for the dying.

I've done my best to plan, to leave information. I've gotten rid of nearly everything that matters to no one else but me. I had an attic full of things from family members who had died. Sentimental to only me. Those things are gone, now.

Perhaps the kindest thing I can do for my daughter is lighten the load she will have to carry, and that might include death with dignity, to release her from watching and waiting.

I will live what I have left of life with gratitude, and do my best to embrace what comes. I see now that a plan to ease the burden from those left behind is one of the kindest things we can offer.