FRED'S BLOG

Living With Death

Posted: 2010-02-27 03:26:48

“Your Mother Has One Month To Live!”

It was the fall of 1992 and my mother had asked me to call and speak with her doctor. I knew she wasn’t feeling well of late, but I was ill prepared to hear him utter these words.

This is the season of our lives when dire pronouncements are starting to be made on a somewhat regular basis. Virtually all of our loved ones are susceptible, especially our friends, siblings and parents.

As tragic as the sudden loss of a loved one is, however, and I’ve felt this directly myself, I think that it is even more difficult to deal with a “death sentence,” that someone you deeply care about has been told that they have a short, finite amount of time to live.

What do you say? How do you handle it? None of us are prepared for this event no matter how many others we have known who have gone through it. And, even if we could take a “quick study course,” or get sage advice from a psychologist or religious figure, the truth is that the advent of death of a loved one is a highly personal and unique experience for all of us. We simply can’t predict how everything is going to play out.

I’ll never forget the call I made to my mother after speaking with her doctor. It took me awhile to even muster up the courage to speak with her. I’ll never know if the doctor was as blunt with her as he was with me. I suspect that he gave her some positive thoughts about treatment and some hope for improvement. But, I’m also sure that he told her that her condition was quite serious and that things just might not work out for her.

Like a lot of difficult things in life, where you have had no previous experience, you grope, probe, feel your way until you find a pattern or mode of behavior that starts to become, at best, a bit more comfortable.

My mother didn’t pass in a month. Nor did she pass in two months. It took fully seven months before she passed away. And, my sister, my mother and I each had to... Read more