A question I don't think I can answer
and it's a morbid question (literally), so it's going under a cut.
I was just talking to my mother. My father will hopefully be admitted to the hospice tomorrow, if there is a bed for him. His kidneys have pretty much packed up, and his liver isn't good either.
We were talking about what time I'll get there tomorrow, and she said, "I haven't asked you, do you want to be there?". For a moment I thought she meant when he's admitted to the hospice, but then I realised she meant there there. There at the end, when he dies. And I just don't know.
My sister and I have talked about it, a few months ago on a particularly bad Sunday when he was having hallucinations and in pain and it was all utterly horrible, and we both said then that we didn't want to be there. We thought, at the time, that Daddy would rather just have Mum there. But now I don't know whether I still feel that way. Will I regret it if I'm not there? Would it mean that I don't care enough, am not brave enough, to sit with him as he leaves us? How can I know, now, what the right answer for me is? How can I know whether I would regret it more if I wasn't there than if I was?
Insofar as you can plan or choose these things, how can I know what to plan, what to choose?
I feel that perhaps I should apologise for unloading all of this upon those few of my online friends who read my journals, but it really does help to put it in print, to share it with people who aren't family, who aren't living it with me. If you want me to stop, or to filter you out, please tell me. But in a small way it is therapeutic to do this. This entry was cross-posted from http://epistrophia.dreamwidth.org/78771.html (
comments). Comment wherever you like!
I was just talking to my mother. My father will hopefully be admitted to the hospice tomorrow, if there is a bed for him. His kidneys have pretty much packed up, and his liver isn't good either.
We were talking about what time I'll get there tomorrow, and she said, "I haven't asked you, do you want to be there?". For a moment I thought she meant when he's admitted to the hospice, but then I realised she meant there there. There at the end, when he dies. And I just don't know.
My sister and I have talked about it, a few months ago on a particularly bad Sunday when he was having hallucinations and in pain and it was all utterly horrible, and we both said then that we didn't want to be there. We thought, at the time, that Daddy would rather just have Mum there. But now I don't know whether I still feel that way. Will I regret it if I'm not there? Would it mean that I don't care enough, am not brave enough, to sit with him as he leaves us? How can I know, now, what the right answer for me is? How can I know whether I would regret it more if I wasn't there than if I was?
Insofar as you can plan or choose these things, how can I know what to plan, what to choose?
I feel that perhaps I should apologise for unloading all of this upon those few of my online friends who read my journals, but it really does help to put it in print, to share it with people who aren't family, who aren't living it with me. If you want me to stop, or to filter you out, please tell me. But in a small way it is therapeutic to do this. This entry was cross-posted from http://epistrophia.dreamwidth.org/78771.html (
comments). Comment wherever you like!