My Mom died this past April, at the age of 82. It was a haunting, terrible end; a slow motion, inescapable nightmare that concluded, for me, in quiet bitterness. All the way to her last breath I believe my Mom was still there, fully functioning, fully alive and aware, but trapped behind a wall of brain seizures that kept her hidden away and her body unresponsive. In those final weeks, on the few occasions she briefly awoke and broke through, we were filled with cautious hope that was quickly replaced by increasing despair as she slipped back under a wall of sleep. She was still there, the entirety of my Mom that friends and family knew and loved, my Mom who had walked this earth with me for all of my 54 years. She was there, trapped and unreachable, until her heart eventually surrendered and wiped her from this Earth.
In the end her medical doctors were rendered ineffectual; the scope of their knowledge and available treatment options ending where my Mom’s predicament began. They saw the rapid fire and chaotic brain seizures, but could not determine their source. The pharmaceuticals (and all combinations thereof) they tried all failed, and brought them no closer to understanding what was happening. They resorted to backwards engineering, eliminating potential sources and hoping they would, in the process, happen upon the actual cause or causes. But as the days passed the only thing that became clear is that the medical staff tasked to save my Mom, couldn’t. And at some point they stopped trying, and began ending her life as painlessly and quietly as possible, through a combination of dehydration and starvation, muted and smoothed over by painkillers.
There is no good way to lose someone you love. Tidy, dignified ends are undoubtedly rare, and happenstance; Nature is indifferent to individual beings, blind to the concept of dignity or love; doctors are only occasional saviors, and despite her unfailing spirit my Mom’s body had become fragile and tired after what seemed like a lifetime of physiological and pathogenic assaults. But she was my Mom, and we had so much more to do, and to experience, and so much more life to live before she left.