Facing the Final Days

A Death  with  Dignity

Contents:  Click on titles below v

Is Life a Boon?

Dear Caregivers

Alzheimer's!  It is just another way to die.  

How Tom died, along with other caregiver stories.

How present attitudes demean the dying.

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Thomas Vincent Murphy  1928 - 1995

This may be difficult to look at, but this picture says it all for me.  I look at Tom in this photo which was taken a few weeks before he died and I see the fear, the helplessness, and the vulnerability.   Tom was the most fearless person I've ever known.  This was not the way he wanted to die, but it is the death he got. 

Being all too familiar with the bias that surrounds this particular disease, I found that  Alzheimer's tends to stand by itself as a 'degrading way to die.'  I can't help but ask these questions: 

Is it more degrading to die of Alzheimer's or is it more degrading to have been reviled, disregarded, disrespected and abandoned because of what is essentially a disease process?  

And... 

Does the nature of this illness mandate more effort on our part to love, unconditionally, the person who is actually doing the dying?

In spite of all the pressure to institutionalize him, I was able to keep Tom home until he died.  If he knew nothing else, he knew he was loved, the same way my new grandson knew he was loved from the moment of his first breath.   

This is the most important task we face as caregivers!

To continue to love our people with the same enthusiasm so readily available for those just beginning their lives.  Their needs for nurturing are no less.

To assist someone through the final days of this disease can be one of the most profound experiences you will have.  However, that is a matter of choice.  Your choice, and solely dependent upon your expectations. 

One of the truths I came to as my husband's illness progressed was awareness that  Alzheimer's was just another way to die.  This death was nothing more special or more horrific compared to other loses in my life.  In each case the end result was the same.  The person was gone from my life when death came and it was the memories of who they had been in my life that stayed .

Beverly