A moment looking ahead into a darkness that is out there….

Connie said it out loud – “I’m scared.” And yes, it a fear of death. We knew how this would end, but saying it out loud changes your world in a moment.

            “I’M SCARED.”

            I didn’t understand what Connie said the first time. I was lying next to her on her bed in memory care. She said it again.

            “I’m scared,” she said.

            “Of what?” I asked. She didn’t answer so I went to what I already knew it was. “Dying?” I asked. “Yes, I am dying” she said.

            I held her close, felt tears coming. I said all the things someone who is not dying thinks someone who is needs to hear. I told her I was with her, that she was surrounded by love and would never be alone. 

            I don’t know if I said the “right things” or if saying nothing, just holding her close, would have been better. When I went back down in the evening she was up and in her chair in front of the TV and had forgotten I had been there earlier, so I assumed did not remember our conversation.

            But I also know there is still awareness hanging on somewhere inside her damaged brain and that she knows what is happening. She spent the last years of her law career in elder law and helped clients and friends, pro bono, move through what we now are moving through. I suspect there is also that inner sense of self that knows things have moved beyond a certain point.

            She fell out in the TV room a few days ago. She landed on a couch, then the floor so she was not hurt. I began a series of conversations with the caregivers that told me what I already knew. We are moving toward our end time.

            The staff now checks on her more frequently. I ordered a power hospital bed to make caring for her easier and it was moved into her unit today. There is now a wheelchair in her unit. The staff has suggested that it might be time to require it if she leaves the unit. They feel she can manage a few short steps from place to place in the unit but not longer walks. They said they will be checking her more frequently in case she falls in her room.

            A senior aide, who I know levels with me, said the decline over the past couple of months has been rapid and taken some of them a bit by surprise.

            We were talking just after Connie had told me she was scared and the aide, who has seen ever one of those she has cared for die, nodded her head. “They know,” she said. I agreed.

            MY GRANDFATHER WAS in a nursing home at the end, mostly because he was losing his vision. It was in an old house next to a funeral home. This was back before EMTs, at least in a small town. The funeral home had a black hearse, and it had a red and white one with a siren – that was the ambulance.

Other than his sight, he was in pretty good shape. But after lunch one day he was having a bit of trouble breathing and so, erring on the side of caution, the staff decided to send him to the hospital. Doug Marsh, the funeral director and a long-time friend of Grandad’s, pulled the ambulance up to the back door. When they wheeled him out and he saw the red and white, Grandad looked up and said “Doug, you brought the wrong wagon.” He died that night.

My grandmother had a heart attack at home and was taken to the hospital. She was in fine spirits, joking with the staff at the hospital she helped raise money for. She asked for a glass of water and was told she could not have one yet. “Are you going to deny a dying woman a glass of water?” she asked. “You aren’t dying, Mrs. Linton,” the nurse said. An hour later she was dead.

They know. I truly believe that. Connie told me at the beginning of this journey that if she had the option of assisted suicide, it had existed so while she expressed fear, I believe she is ready. I just don’t know what to do with that belief.

When I started writing this blog I did a lot of research, talked to people and gave my best effort to helping others understand what to expect on this horrible journey. Today, I know that I really did not know what to expect. For the most part I have been writing as though there was more time, that the end I knew was out there but, I hoped, a long way off.

Today I know it is not that far off, and I am not sure I know what to make of that. I cancelled a couple of trips I had planned. I decided it was not a time to be far away, even for a few days. I could be over-reacting. Maybe her comment was just a comment in the moment that she forgot about within a few hours. Or maybe it was awareness of time going away.

I don’t know. Nothing I have learned prepared me to that moment lying in bed, holding her close, when for whatever reason she said out loud what our reality always has been. 

Rich Heiland, has been a reporter, editor, publisher/general manager at daily papers in Texas, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio and New Hampshire. He was part of a Pulitzer Prize-winning team at the Xenia Daily (OH) Daily Gazette, a National Newspaper Association Columnist of the Year. Since 1995 he has operated an international consulting, public speaking and training business specializing in customer service, general management, leadership and staff development with major corporations, organizations, and government. He also writes the blog stuffonmymind.blog. Semi-retired, he and his wife live in West Chester, PA. He can be reached at [email protected].