Meme and her journey Day 32,412
07/15/2008 05:29 p.m.

One of the things that Meme brought up recently was how she'd "like to go the coast one last time, to smell the salt air and feel the ocean breezes." Excitedly I began making plans to go late in August, after my daughter-in-law's baby shower and just before school starts. I was so happy she wanted to get out of the house. It's been impossible to get her to go out for any other reason than to have her nails done, and even then, the event is precariously successful.

So I looked online, found a couple of hotels that were right on the beach. I figured we'd take the wheelchair just in case she wasn't up to using her walker all the time, and to help her travel the boardwalk a bit. Jeremiah and I and Steven (my 17 yr old son) would go as well (since Steven is the only one who really hasn't gotten away this summer at all).

So I get a good bit of it planned in my head, and plan on talking with Meme about it, but she beats me to it, saying, "I've been thinking about the beach, and I just don't think I can make it. I just don't feel well enough to go, and I get so tired." So I counter with, "Well, you know, I thought about that and planned on taking the wheel chair just in case, so you wouldn't have to feel so tired and you could still enjoy the walks and everything." She says, "No, I just don't think I want to go." So I encourage her to take a couple of days and think about it some more, frankly reminding her that the fresh, sea air and the sound of the ocean and the seafood would all do her some good.

The next day, she tells me again that she just doesn't think she can make it. Not that she doesn't WANT to go, but rather that she would if she could but....And so I frankly (but as gently as I can) tell her that her condition is likely not going to improve anymore, that how she feels today is probably as good as it's going to get, and she should take advantage of whatever energy she has left to enjoy herself, AND that this is likely the last trip to the ocean that she'll take. I hated to be so blunt, but it's the truth, and I hate to see her miss an opportunity to do something that she made a request to do. She still insisted that she just didn't think she could make it.

The day after that, I asked her if she'd reached a final decision since planning is a must this time of year. Rather emphatically (and I suppose it was called for since she had already apprently made her decision and it was me who wasn't really accepting it) she said, "I'm not going and that's final." So, in a last ditch effort to get her to WAKE UP, I say, "So, basically, what you're telling me is that you're out of energy for good, that you're simply going to sit inside these four walls doing nothing until you die. You do realize that's what you're saying, right?" And she replies, "I just know how I feel so weak and tired, and I know I can't make it."

I'm just frustrated. IMHO, it's that very attitude that's caused her to feel weak and tired to begin with, and getting out would help. It would remind her there is a world out there. I would be ok, really, if she'd expressed to me that she wasn't ready to give up, to leave her body. And she has recently said that she'd like to make it to her birthday, to see the birth of her first great-great grandchild, but then she's ready to go. But mostly, her sentiments are that she's not done, and she wants "to see how it all turns out."

I know, I know. She's damn near 89 years old and she's entitled to feel how she feels. But to see her WILLINGLY deteriorate...even though it's her perogative, I think I'm not handling that very well. She rallied herself so well when she left Evergreen to come home, and she's hung on so bravely except for being unwilling to advocate for herself. But she's always been that way, always depended on others to provide for her. And rightly so in some ways. Her life has been so hard. She's had pollio, and rheumatic fever as a teenager that nearly killed her (she wasted away to 88lbs and her fever rose to 107). She's never driven because she lost the sight in one of her eyes when she was dropped on her head as a baby. She's only had 4-5 years of schooling. She was abandoned at 8 years old in a Catholic orphanage during the depression because her father was absent and her mother couldn't feed all of them and family members took the other childen except for her and her sister, Louise. She was forced to go to work at 14. I can't imagine having to make do without the resources that women have today. She has diabetes, and macular degenerative disease that has rendered her legally blind even with the best glasses for a good number of years now. So, I know she is more than entitled to let go of living if she likes. I guess I'm just saying that I don't know if I can do it, watch her give up this way.

But I have to find a way to honor her process, because this is the end of HER life, and it's my job to support her in it. I mean, I know I have to deal with my feelings about it, but I can't let my feelings about it rule.

P.S. She's been living for 32,412 days.


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