I have a new term in my lexicon, “natural exit”. Dr. Arvin Gill give me the language. All my sisters and I were sitting around a table in the heart of yet another assisted living facility. Dr. Gill was with us for a meeting to have a clear and reasonable conversation about how we could support my mother through this final traverse.
He motioned his hand suggesting my mother’s plateaus, decreases in abilities and recoveries to stabilize. It became clear that there have been many points over the past three years where my mother could have made a natural exit but was resuscitated by us, by the system, by her will to live, and by medications that re-stabilized her. I’m not really clear on how many potential natural exits she has had by now but I know in my heart, it is numerous. Each time being saved or revived or caught just in time with the spirit of doing the right thing.
“Death is rarely fast and easy. It is also rarely painful,” Arvin said. He also reminded us, “you’re never too late to switch course,” which provided the dark levity our guilt-ridden Catholic hearts needed. He gave us the perspective and permission to embrace a natural exit in a society and healthcare system built to prolong life. It’s not about killing someone or even potentially giving up, this is about letting life, or in this case death, happen and bearing witness to the present moment.
My mother has mostly disappeared at this point. Many days I marvel not only at her but the others wandering the space she now inhabits. Some still have much vibrancy and light as she did a few years ago. Others are mostly vacant or confused about where they even are. After meeting with Arvin, I realized some are experiencing the dreaded, “hospice”. It’s as if the medications are keeping their bodies alive and their brains are a mere organs along for the ride.
Often they are drawn to me, drawn to interaction, to connection. My mother still is too when I come sit next to her, ask her to open her eyes and look at me. I’m not even sure she sees anything through her cataracts. Still, she smiles as she faces me, as if her manners have yet to fail her. I like to think she knows me mostly or at least knows I come from her, I am familiar. By now the visits are rarely more than 30 minutes tops. It seems to be all she can handle.
It’s not easy in the end. We must help each other move on. Change can be scary but we must welcome what is natural and true; what is coming for us.