This is the story of how my mother died. The ending is not as sad as you might expect. The parts before it are but not the ending.
As I've written here before, her health was pretty bad the last few years of her life. She could barely see, she could barely walk and she kept having episodes of Congestive Heart Failure. There were other problems as well but those were the three biggies.
(I was in a restaurant one day during all this and I said to the person I was with, "They're just awful, these episodes of Congestive Heart Failure." A man was just leaving the next booth and he stopped at my table and said, "I didn't hear what show you were talking about but nothing could be worse than episodes of William Shatner's new series." I'm not sure which William Shatner series he was talking about but I have a feeling it was at least a little more enjoyable than Congestive Heart Failure.)
Her three main problems kept her from doing almost every one of the things she loved to do. The bad eyes prevented her from reading or fully enjoying television. Her bad legs kept her from travelling. The Congestive Heart Failure kept her from eating any of the things she loved. I would guardedly and occasionally bring her foods she probably should have avoided or take her to restaurants for them. My reasoning — and her doctor agreed — was that one such meal every now and then wouldn't hurt and she needed something like that to lift her at least partway out of her many depressions.
Eventually though, the depressions got so bad that even fried clams couldn't make them go away…and if you knew how much my mother loved fried clams, you'd realize how deep those depressions were. She spoke increasingly of wishing it would all be over, especially before she went totally blind. She was legally blind. She just wasn't totally blind…yet.
She loved her independence. She loved living alone in a house she'd lived in for close to sixty years and she was able to live there and by herself as long as she had a tiny bit of sight. We talked it through again and again and she didn't like any of the options she'd have once her "good eye" (which wasn't very good) failed her. Could she live there alone? No. Could we move in a 24/7 caregiver? No. Could she move in with me? No. Okay, what about moving into an Assisted Living Facility? No, no, no. She hated every alternative.
Her answer? Go before her vision did. Time and again, she reminded me of my promise not to allow resuscitation, not to allow her to be kept alive on some machine.
She kept threatening to eat all the things they told her she couldn't/shouldn't eat. For seemingly half her life, she was in Kaiser Hospital for this ailment or that ailment or some other ailment. She had a lot of ailments. She used to joke that she'd met every doctor in the facility except the ones who handled pregnancies, rollerblading injuries and erectile dysfunction.
Every patient, of course, has a medical record of all their appointments, tests, hospitalizations, examinations, etc. Later than you might have thought, Kaiser converted all of theirs from paper to computer and someone had to scan my mother's records. An administrator there congratulated my mother on having the thickest file in the history of the entire nationwide Kaiser organization. She was oddly proud of that.
She began to speak more and more of chili dogs. Whenever she stayed at that hospital, she was aware that right outside during the day, there was a food truck that specialized in them. Each time I asked her if she needed anything, she'd ask me to go down and get her six of them with onions. I'd reply as if I'd misheard her, "Fine. I'll bring you a box of unsalted saltine crackers and a fresh box of Kleenex."
One time she asked for the six chili dogs, I asked her, "What would you do if I did bring them?"
She didn't hesitate for a second. She answered, "Eat them and die happily." Then she added, "If you're a good, loving son, you'll bring them to me before I can't see at all." Other people in that position ask for poison or a gun. My mother favored Death by Chili Dog. I understand some states are now considering that in lieu of Lethal Injection.
Slowly but certainly, my concern about her changed. It was a tough turn to make but I moved from wanting her health to improve to wanting the end to be soon — certainly before she was blind without the "legally" — and free of pain. I was already there when her personal physician at Kaiser told me there was nothing more they could so for her at the hospital.
My mother wanted to go home but I instead put her into a nursing facility she'd been in before — a pretty good one, even though it was a pain-in-the-ass for me to drive all the way down to it in Torrance. They had a good Physical Therapy department and I told her that she needed some of that before she'd be able to return to her home. But I wasn't fooling her and she wasn't fooling me: She knew that I knew that she knew that I knew that she was not going back to that house, especially to live alone.
She was not uncomfy there. I hired a private caregiver to come in, take care of her laundry, get her things she needed and keep her company on those days when I could not get down there. The caregiver, as you're about to hear, more than earned what I paid her.
I was not there when the end came. I was voice-directing a Garfield recording session that afternoon and once it was over, I'd planned to drive down to the nursing home to visit her as I did every other day.
There is, of course, no "good" time for Congestive Heart Failure but some times are better than others. The day, for instance, was the last day her stay in that nursing home was being paid-for by Kaiser health insurance. We'd maxed out her covered days and starting the next morn, I was going to begin paying out-of-pocket by way of the nose, which would have really upset her if she'd known. At the time, I didn't know the precise date I'd begin paying and she didn't, either. At least, I don't think she did.
Also, the time of day was ideal for her. The nursing facility had an affiliation with Kaiser and they sent Kaiser doctors over to check on all the Kaiser patients who were housed there. The Kaiser doctor had visited her a half-hour earlier and was just leaving the building when it happened. The caregiver was with her, just getting ready to go on an errand.
Suddenly, my mother felt a pain she'd never felt before, knew exactly what it was and yelled, "Get someone." I'm sure at that moment she was more concerned about pain than survival. She probably even liked the part about not surviving any longer.
Instantly, the caregiver sprinted out to the parking lot where the doctor was just getting into her car to head back to Kaiser. Ten seconds later, the doctor was in my mother's room with her bag. She took one look at my mother, ordered an ambulance and administered something to lessen the pain.
The nursing home had its own ambulance and it was only two blocks from a very large hospital. That was one of the reasons I'd chosen it. They had her there in five minutes, as opposed to the hour or so it would have taken if she'd had that attack at home.
In the rush, her purse and her I.D. were separated from her so the emergency room crew did not immediately get the "do not resuscitate" directive. In its absence, they did everything they could to bring her back to life but nothing helped. Her purse with the D.N.R. notice in it arrived a few minutes later but by then, it didn't matter.
I wished, of course, I could have been there but it was best that she went quickly. Nothing will ever convince me she wasn't happy it was over…especially before she went totally blind. The E.R. doctor who phoned to break the news to me said it was probably painless, in large part because the Kaiser doctor was there and gave her something. I'm not sure what it was but I'd like to think it was six chili dogs. With onions.