Originally Posted by
HollowPoint
We lost our mom a couple of years back to the same Alzheimer symptoms. She was about the same age, and she could no longer recognize any of us. She didn't know who we were or even who she was.
Earlier, during a time when she did have sufficient wits about her, she did leave written instructions to let her expired if she were ever to find herself in a medical state of not being able to make such a decision on her own. Those documents were kept by my oldest sister.
Perhaps for the most selfish of reasons, our sister chose to tear up those documents and throw them away. When she told us what she had done, none of her six siblings objected. This too was equally selfish but, none of us could bear the thought of allowing our mom to die, regardless of the circumstances. It didn't matter that she didn't know who we were when we'd visit her in the nursing home. She was still our mom.
It was strange to me that she didn't know who her own kids were but, when one of my nieces or nephews would bring their small children to visit her, she never forgot what a baby was. A baby meant, family. She would always take them in her arms and love them like one would expect for a grandma to do.
All of our prayers and all of our well-wishing didn't turn the tide. Eventually we got that phone call that kids who love their parents dread having to receive. She passed away in her sleep, according to the nursing home staff. We were glad she was free from that Alzheimer scourge but, we were enormously saddened that we had lost part of the glue that holds a family together.
Should we have honored her wishes to let her die if she ever found herself in a circumstance where she couldn't have made such a decision on her own? It was about eight years between the time she had documented her wishes till the day she died.
Our mom was a confessing Christian too. We'll follow along eventually so, if apologies are due, that will be the time and the place where one would imagine that apologies would take place; although, if or when we make it to Heaven, nothing about what transpired in this earthly life will really matter anymore, will it?
HollowPoint