Living the Dying Days
The funeral service that I attended was for the father of one my colleague who had been fighting with cancer for a while. While I felt sorry and sad for my colleague considering that she is very closed to him but at the same time, I also felt relieved for her. Looking at the stress she gone through in the past few months to cope with work and the demand her father required, that perhaps this would be better for everyone.
You might think that i'm heartless but having the experience with my grandmother, that perhaps there are some sense in it too. Coming from a working class family, my grandmother worked really hard to bring up her children and as her children all finally grew up and had their own families, she was diagnosed with kidney failure. As all her children and grandchildren loved her very much, everyone did their best to keep her alive.
During the first few years, everyone was very caring and will rush to her side at a single phone call. But year after year, with more money gone, her situation worsen, we all started to change. While we still loved her but we also started to find her annoying. While trying to meet the work/study pressure, we were also constantly being reminded by her that she needed us. Coming from her perspective, I don't really blame her while I also don't blame anyone of us for losing that loving feeling. It's just too long.
From her angle, she was a active person. The dialysis had really weakens her and she finally had no choice but to be homebound or specifically chairbound the whole day in the house, while everyone busy with their own life/schedule that at times, it's as if she's invisible, sitting in her chair all alone and no one knew about her existence. at the same time, seeing the close relationship she had built with everyone slowly weakens and faded must have hurt her very very much.
Therefore, is it worth to live through these dying days just to personally experienced what you have built all these years, gone, deteriorated? And as the children, saving this loving mother's life is definitely the morally right thing to do but when this plain simple decision had made our love for her becoming hatre, that we might have asked, is it really the right decision? Had we hurt her more by saving her? Would we have a better/positive memory of her if we had made the opposite decision earlier? Is saving someone from the dying bed is actually wrong?
Remembering my grandmother....
You might think that i'm heartless but having the experience with my grandmother, that perhaps there are some sense in it too. Coming from a working class family, my grandmother worked really hard to bring up her children and as her children all finally grew up and had their own families, she was diagnosed with kidney failure. As all her children and grandchildren loved her very much, everyone did their best to keep her alive.
During the first few years, everyone was very caring and will rush to her side at a single phone call. But year after year, with more money gone, her situation worsen, we all started to change. While we still loved her but we also started to find her annoying. While trying to meet the work/study pressure, we were also constantly being reminded by her that she needed us. Coming from her perspective, I don't really blame her while I also don't blame anyone of us for losing that loving feeling. It's just too long.
From her angle, she was a active person. The dialysis had really weakens her and she finally had no choice but to be homebound or specifically chairbound the whole day in the house, while everyone busy with their own life/schedule that at times, it's as if she's invisible, sitting in her chair all alone and no one knew about her existence. at the same time, seeing the close relationship she had built with everyone slowly weakens and faded must have hurt her very very much.
Therefore, is it worth to live through these dying days just to personally experienced what you have built all these years, gone, deteriorated? And as the children, saving this loving mother's life is definitely the morally right thing to do but when this plain simple decision had made our love for her becoming hatre, that we might have asked, is it really the right decision? Had we hurt her more by saving her? Would we have a better/positive memory of her if we had made the opposite decision earlier? Is saving someone from the dying bed is actually wrong?
Remembering my grandmother....
posted by JT @ 11:21 PM
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