Life is a strange commodity. It seems from this side of the divide to be the most precious thing we have. Truly the only thing, in fact. Without it, nothing else exists. Yet in many ways, life has been reduced to dollars and cents. A conveyer belt you ride throughout your journey, handing over every last nugget you collect. To someone. Anyone. A sea of outstretched hands grabbing until you’re gone. And even after...until the tiny void you once occupied on this planet collapses like a vacuum around the emptiness. And the insignificance of it all becomes an indelible blow to those you’ve left behind.
I watched a hospital hasten my mother’s death. It was her wish to die at home when she was ready. There was a dignified plan, a DNR. But instead, she was killed in a sterile institution. For money. For efficiency. For order and expediency. It was routine. It was cavalier. And I was complicit.
At the tail end of a 12 year battle with COPD, my mother found herself in a hospital, having broken her hip and gone through hip replacement surgery. Nobody looking at this woman would believe she stood a chance of living long enough to recover from the trauma of the break, let alone a major surgery. But the doctors badgered her into it anyhow.
Afterwards, she declined increasingly. And even though she, the doctors, and her own brother kept advising me that she was doing fine - even improving - and that there was no need for me to drop everything and rush there before the planned time, when I did arrive, she was done. The fight was all gone. And the decision was made to move her into hospice...which was simply a room a few wings over in the same hospital.
The staff transferred my mother to a gurney, rolled her through the halls, and deposited her into another bed in another room in a much darker part of the building. The family was then left alone for a brief period and instructed, “If there’s anything you’d like to say to her, now is the time.”
My mother’s eyes were full of brightness and tears and an urgent hunger to devour every moment one last time. But they also contained a peaceful resolve, an exhausted relief, resignation and acceptance. She told us all that she loved us and how lucky she felt. And those seemed what were to be her last, graceful words.
The nurse returned with a syringe, ready to begin “medication”. Morphine. My mother had been in this hospital for over two weeks. She’d already begun the useless ritual of rehabilitation for the new hip that everyone knew she’d never live to use. The pain medication for her surgery had long since dwindled down to a pill every 4-6 hours as needed. Yet here we were...watching a needle inserted into her I.V.
I cannot begin to describe the surreal dissonance I felt as I watched the frail, dying shell that was once my mother being pumped full of drugs. Administered not to manage anything...but to hasten the destruction of everything. This was not the way it was supposed to happen.
Morphine works quickly. And as my incredibly image conscious mother slipped into it, her true final words gurgled out in a loopy giggle, “Oops, I pooped.” and then she lost consciousness for the very last time.
Then came a flat, factual, vacant barrage from the nurse. She explained how my mom would be doled out regular doses at timed intervals in increasing amounts until it was over.
Until it was over.
The words were never spoken out loud. The implication was always that she was dying and we were simply “making her more comfortable” as she floated naturally towards the end of the conveyer belt. But the truth is that they killed her. And I stood by and watched while they did. At her own request, based on her own wishes. But at the end of the day, I sat in a room for about 13 hours watching the vacant body of my mother systematically snuffed out.
It’s been six years but I’m still as haunted by this experience as if it’d been yesterday. Actually, that’s not true. The guilt and anger and shame and confusion and all of the other conflicting emotions battling within me have increased as the profound, poetic beauty I was told I was so fortunate to be witnessing has faded.
Death is inevitable. I get that. I don’t like it. But I get it. What should not be inevitable is the heartless stripping away of dignity. Of choice. What should not be inevitable is the reducing of lives to KPIs.
Ideally, death should be a celebration, a finale. It should be as unique as the person experiencing it. And the memories left behind should be of the love and the life...
Not the soulless metal and machinery of a darkened hospital room. Not the numeric values buried in a sea of figures on a cold, lifeless balance sheet. And not the hopelessness that at the end of the conveyer belt, that’s quite possibly all that will be waiting for any of us...that that’s all any of it truly means.
