Today Is The Greatest Day I've Ever Known

Death and dying is a touchy subject for us hoomans.

Doesn't matter if you're 'saved' and will spend eternity with your Lord and Savior, or you don't have a clue about why in the hell we live just to die. The specter of your life ending, no matter what you say or do, is disturbing and unsettling and scary.

That's because unlike literally every other life form on this planet, we're acutely self-aware of our conscious existence and can comprehend that life and living will eventually end and leave us in a state of rigor, desiccation and decomposition.

That's a lovely mental image, innit?

How we spend our final days is a subject of trial and tribulation, especially when we factor in the serendipity of how we live and how quickly and easily life can be taken from us against our will.

People die all around us, every minute of every hour of every day, in every conceivable way.

Old age.... disease... accidents... suicide... addiction... crime... war... pestilence... ignorance... all of these and many more make up Death's Hit Parade.

And of course, our preference is to choose the method by which we'll end up taking the Dirt Nap if we get the chance to do so. Here's mine:

Once I know I'm toast, I will take in hand a previously-acquired heavy dose of deadly narcotic and drive (or be driven) as far up into the mountains as possible. I'll then ingest the heavy narcotic and begin walking into the forest until I lose consciousness and fall over and die. The local animals will rip and tear me to shreds and eat me all up, then they'll shit me out and I'll become compost for the living forest. Maybe they'll be lucky and get a good high from eating my narcotic-infused organs.

Organically Recycled Hooman... not Soylent Green!



BTW, if you've never seen 'Soylent Green', I suggest you do so. Great social dystopian commentary, and it was Edward G. Robinson's last film.

Here's something to ponder: you know those flocks of birds that are everywhere, all around us, every day? Ever wonder why, with so many thousands of birds all around us, every day... why don't we ever see dead birds lying around everywhere too? They have a short life, maybe a couple of years max, so you'd think our streets and lawns and parks would be littered with crow and sparrow and pigeon carcasses.

But no.

We can never know how aware those birds are of their brief lives, but the conventional wisdom is that when birds feel unwell or sick, they find a secluded place to either recover or die. Their small bodies are then eaten up or simply desiccate and decompose where they fell, becoming organic compost.

Sound familiar?

It may be nothing more than ancient instinctual behavior, but it seems to work pretty well for us hoomans with our streets and lawns and parks that aren't covered in bird carcasses.

Same goes for squirrels and possums and lizards and raccoons and coyotes and all the other 'wild' animals that share our suburban habitat. They may not be cognizant of their place in the grand scheme of things, but they know when the time has come to separate themselves from their group and let nature rule.

It's far more complicated for hoomans. For one thing, our bodies are much larger and take longer to naturally desiccate and decompose. And then there's the smell. And the idea of hoomans seeing other hoomans lying there, dead and decomposing, eyes and mouth wide open, belly distended, taunting their mortality.

That's why 'modern' man buries the dead, to hide the stench and remove the carcass from sight or from being et. All the other ceremonial brouhaha over burials is made-up dogmatic baloney to salve our self-awareness of Death's Hit Parade. 



Ancient man used the same instincts as animals when it came time to croak, walking away from the group to expire alone, unseen and un-smelled and ready to be ripped and torn to shreds and eaten up by the local animals, who then shit out the hooman organic compost.

I... I'm sensing a theme here.

The subject of Final Days came to me while watching the coverage of the untimely death of basketball great Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna and several friends and associates. Losing their lives in a helicopter crash was an awful way to go since it's highly likely there were several terror-filled minutes experienced by all aboard before plowing into that Calabasas hillside.

On the other hand, Kobe routinely chopper-commuted from his Newport Beach home to points all over the Southern California for (by his own estimation) over 17 years, putting himself at risk every time he strapped in. Yes... driving the freeways is also dangerous and can lead to a fiery death, but it beats falling out of the sky in a malfunctioning or errant aircraft, watching the impending impact with big eyes and a clenched heart.

This is why we'll never have flying cars as personal transport. Crashing while at ground level dramatically increases the chances for survival.

Here's the thing: much has been made of the fact Kobe and Gianna spent their last morning alive together in church, which brings a sense of comfort to those mourning their loss. Father and daughter spent that morning praying to their deity of choice, not anticipating their impending demise.

It got me thinking about the final day I spent with certain loved ones that I've lost over the last 20 years or so.

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My Grandfather Manuel roamed the earth for 94 years until getting hit by a car on one of his daily walks. He survived but was confined to a wheelchair and decided he'd lived long enough and didn't want to be a burden, so he just stopped eating. After a week or so he slipped into unconsciousness, so our family gathered around him on that final night to cry and share memories and be together. We all crammed into his room as he took his last breaths, watching him leave, wanting him to stay but knowing he could not. Although his life's force left his body in front of our eyes, I could swear it entered all of us and we were energized with his love and the force of his nature.

My wife's Grandmother Lila was another force of nature, irascible and thorny and perfectly wonderful because she really liked me and I her. Well into her 80's, she suffered a series of strokes that left her in a nursing home bed, unable to walk or speak. The last time we saw her alive, it was during the holidays so we took her a small green dinosaur plush doll wearing a Santa Cap. She grabbed that thing and held it tight next to her chest, eyes beaming and glistening and showing a giant smile. She knew we loved her a lot. She passed only days later, and we took home one of the gift plants from her memorial that thrives in our living room, huge and green, and we call it Grandma.  I also have the dino doll too!

At only 64 years old, my Mom spent her final day unconscious in a nursing home, having stroked out the night before, the latest in a series of strokes that resulted from a lifetime abusing alcohol and cigarettes. My Aunt Yolanda (Mom's best friend since grade school), my wife and I spent several hours at Mom's bedside that day, reminiscing and laughing and crying and holding her hands and talking to her and feeling lots of love for each other. Mom passed at 11 that night, and I recall the searing reality of loading her wheelchair and few remaining belongings into my truck the next morning, knowing I'd never see her again.

At only 43 years old, my younger Brother Chuck's lifetime of alcohol abuse meant his health was shot... liver failure, infected bloodstream, gangrene... he was a mess. When I got the call he'd been admitted into the hospital again, I raced up to Northern California to see if I could help. There he was in the hospital bed, skin and eyes yellowed with jaundice, ranting that he'd be fine once he got a new liver. He rejected the idea he'd need to stop drinking for at least 6 months before he'd get on a donor list, calling me stupid for saying that even though we both knew it was true. We'd re-established our brotherly bond only a few years before, but this final visit was filled with acrimony and anger, accusation and denial. I left knowing he'd be gone soon... and sure enough, he was.

********************************************************

I read a sci-fi story once about a doctor who'd secretly invented a machine that could predict exactly how long a person would live. The machine would take blood samples and the results looked like a long pink tube that could be measured in days. He became famous and then infamous, which forced him to go into hiding because the insurance industry had a bounty on his head since his invention would put them out of business. He held them off long enough to get run over by a bus, because he already knew when his time would come and he wanted to keep the machine out of the hands of those who would exploit it.

We don't know how long our conscious existence will last... the length of our pink tube.

We don't know if there's an afterlife or if reincarnation is a thing or if believers will spend eternity with their savior of choice. Anyone that tells you otherwise is lying because they don't really know either.

We know there are many easy ways to extend our own lives by eating better, sleeping better, taking care of our health... stuff like that. However, we don't do those things and so we die much sooner than we need to, even though we know how not to die sooner. Stoopid hoomans.



I like to say that each day above-ground is a great day, a precious gift, a thing of value not to be squandered. It can be a challenge trying to remember that because life can be distracting and mean and venal and heartbreaking. 

The secret is to think about that last day of conscious existence, that final day of breathing and seeing and loving. 

Chances are, we won't know when that day arrives because death can sneak up behind us and snatch our conscious existence right out from under our feet.

So make sure that today and every waking moment is spent doing something that gives you purpose and meaning, no matter how grand or trivial it may seem. Take each day by the scruff of the neck and shake it... HARD.

I like to think that in the final seconds of his life, Kobe knew in his heart he'd done exactly that.

Be like Kobe. Live large, kick ass, take names.

"Razors pain you; 
Rivers are damp:
Acids stain you; 
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful; 
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live."
     -- 'Resume' by Dorothy Parker


Lead image, Gracias de Google Images; 'Soylent Green', 'Monty Python & The Holy Grail', 'Monty Python-The Meaning of Life - Death' and Smashing Pumpkins 'Today' videos, Muchismas Gracias de YouTube.

Slipping Into Darkness

This story is 100% true.

April, 2011

We knew if Betty’s life was gonna be saved, we would have to do it ourselves.

After suffering a dizzy spell and falling in her home, Betty (her real name) had already spent six days in hospital being poked and prodded and medicated and imaged and evaluated and, after a somewhat inconclusive diagnosis, was pronounced healthy enough to be transferred to a local nursing care facility to regain her strength and mobility.  She couldn’t walk yet, but she would soon, they assured us.

It didn’t turn out that way.

She was in that nursing care facility, Country Villa in Seal Beach (CA), for 12 long days, during which time she was physically dropped by staffers, denied fluids, overmedicated, underfed and rendered unable to perform physical therapy due to weakness and lack of muscle tone.  They said "She isn’t sufficiently capable of making additional progress" and concluded that she was a candidate for long-term hospice care and would inform the insurance company of their decision. This was bullshit, and we knew it.

Over the first 11 days of her so-called ‘convalescence’ in that awful place, The Artist (Betty’s daughter) and I watched Betty’s health decline rapidly.  She went from being able to sit up on the edge of her bed to requiring a strap around her torso to keep her upright in her wheelchair.  Her mouth was full of terrible sores… she suffered the indignity of a catheter when they decided changing her diapers was too much trouble… she developed a severe urinary infection and was unable to eat any solid food at all.  When we visited her on The 11th Day, we knew that she was in dire straits, and the nursing facility was only making her worse and worse.  We had to do something.

On The 12th Day, I contacted Betty's health insurance company (SCAN) and spent hours on the phone with them, pleading for help.  I told them we were gonna break her out of that awful place and take her to the hospital ER unless they did it for us. To his credit, the agency's service rep was most-excellent and very pro-active, informing me that removing her without the proper approvals would cause a world of legal hurt for everyone. He did some investigation of his own while I held on the phone, confirmed the crappy nature of the care facility, checked with his supervisors and made a crucial decision. He assured me that if the staff physician rejected the family's demands to have her transferred to the ER, the insurance company would step in the next day, take over her care and do it themselves. That's all I needed to hear.

I raced home after work that evening for a speedy shower and change of clothes. The Artist and I jumped in The Beetle and blasted 35 miles up the freeway in rush-hour traffic to Betty’s home to meet up with her husband Don (his real name) and granddaughter and head to the facility.  I made the mistake of stopping to grab a burrito beforehand and was cooling my jets for 20 minutes while the cooks kept screwing up the orders.  When I finally got my food I was livid, because the facility’s visiting hours ended at 8pm and it was already past 7pm.  We hooked up with the rest of the family and raced the 10 miles back to that terrible place.

We walked in at about 7:50pm and noticed the expansive hallways, usually lined with patients in their wheelchairs, were deserted.  We went to Betty’s room and were alarmed at her appearance.  Her skin had the pallor of death, she could barely lift her head from the pillow, her mouth was filled with open sores and her tongue had the color and texture of an eggplant. When Don saw her he was shocked, and after a few minutes of visiting, we exited her room.  Don said “She’s dying… right in front of our eyes, she’s dying. I don't think she'll last another day in here. They’re killing her”  That hit me hard.  I decided RIGHT THEN to do something.

We’d been attempting to reach the staff physician, a Dr. Kim (not her real name) for days to ask for help, but no dice.  So when I walked down the long hallway, looking for someone… ANYONE… to talk to, I crossed paths with a small Asian woman in a white coat with a nametag, obviously a doctor doing her rounds. I spun around and did a double-take.  Could that be her, the mysterious Dr. Kim who refused to return my many calls?  I asked the nursing staffer on duty if that small Asian lady was indeed Dr. Kim and she confirmed that it was her.  I went back to the family standing outside Betty’s room and told them Dr. Kim was in the house and I was gonna talk to her about Betty’s condition and our plans for her.  The Artist begged me to not lose my cool and use a calming tone with her.  I agreed.

When I walked back to the nursing station, Dr. Kim was standing there, making notes in patient files.  From her demeanor, I assumed this was her standard routine, checking out patients after the families had gone home so they wouldn’t bother her with, you know, annoying questions and stuff. I also figgered she wasn’t expecting to be confronted by desperate family members at this late hour. I introduced myself to her and asked why she hadn’t responded to my numerous messages.  Her answer: “I never got your messages. And besides, you talked with my assistants, they should have been able to help you.”  WRONG ANSWER, DOC.

In a calm but insistent manner, I spent the next 5 minutes delineating Betty’s condition, our serious concerns about her rapidly declining health, and our desire to have her transferred to the local hospital ER for immediate care that evening.  The Doc began to blather something about more tests being needed and that Betty wasn’t as bad as we thought.  My response was direct:  if she didn’t transfer Betty that night, the insurance company would take over the case the next day and get her to the ER, then have words with a certain Dr. Kim.  Looking up at me from her 5-foot nothing stance, the Doc's eyes got really big upon hearing me say ‘insurance company take-over’.  Without saying a word, she went over to the night’s Charge Nurse and asked her to perform an evaluation on Betty… she simply wouldn’t do it herself. Bitch.

We walked to the room with the charge nurse who asked us to remain outside while she looked at Betty.  She went in, pulled the curtains around the bed and spent about 2 minutes in there.  She pulled the curtains open, came outside and said “Oh yeah, she needs to go to the emergency room RIGHT NOW."  She walked to Dr, Kim, they spoke for a moment, then Dr. Kim came up to us and said she would write up the transfer order right away and have an ambulance pick up Betty shortly and take her to the ER.

To say we were ecstatic would be an understatement.  Don looked like he was gonna cry, same for The Artist and granddaughter.  We went in and told Betty what was gonna happen and the best she could muster was to feebly lift her head from the pillow, open her eyes, whisper “OK, that sounds good”, then drop her head and close her eyes.  About 45 minutes later, the ambulance arrived and loaded her onto a gurney for the short drive to the hospital.  As the EMT’s strapped her in for the ride, Don and granddaughter took all of Betty’s belonging to their car, and we asked them to go home and wait while we followed the ambulance and helped get her admitted.  We jumped in The Beetle and followed the ambulance onto the freeway on-ramp Northbound.

Now, we’ve all seen an ambulance during emergency patient transports, sirens blaring and lights flashing, warning other cars to move aside.  That didn’t happen. Once the ambulance merged onto the freeway, it took off at over 90mph, seemingly to try and lose us, without lights or sirens, oblivious to other cars around them.  I sped up and started following their frantic traffic-weaving movements.

The Artist is yelling at me:

“AREYOUFUCKINGKIDDINGMESLOWDOWNYOU’REGONNAGETUSKILLED!!!!!!” 

My answer was to shout back:

“NOWAYARETHEYGONNALOSEMEIWANNAKNOWWHERETHEY’REGOING!!!!”

For the next 10 minutes, we raced at way-illegal speeds on the freeway, never losing sight of that lumbering ambulance slicing across lanes, around other cars and going faster, ever faster.  I was gripping the steering wheel like I had talons, hearing The Artist’s shouts of protest in my right ear, eyes glued to the road ahead flying at me through the windshield, hoping against hope that some hapless bozo in a slow-moving Buick wouldn’t change lanes in front of me at 45mph and take us all out.  The Beetle kept the pace, never once placed a wheel wrong, seemed to relish the asphalt dance.

After what seemed like 10 minutes, the ambulance veered off the freeway and onto the correct off-ramp, with us in hot pursuit. They ran several red lights with us right behind them, turned sharply onto a side street and directly into the ER ambulance bay.  We followed them through and slid into the parking lot across from the ER entrance.  We watched them offload Betty, wondering if she had any idea about what had just happened, and walked into the ER to get her admitted.  It was now about 9:30PM, less than 2 hours since we first walked into the care facility to rescue Betty. 

WE DID IT.

The ER waiting room was crowded when we arrived and checked in, with nary a chair to be found anywhere.  After a while we found a place to sit and wait, then were called and escorted to the ER bay where we found Betty awake, propped up in bed, with a buzz of activity around her.  Over the next several hours, multiple doctors and nurses and technicians and others came and went, a blur of medicinal treatment taking place as we watched from our little stackable chairs.  Around 1AM, I grabbed a pillow from the closet, set it on a spare tray table, laid my head down and dozed in a sitting position for about 30 minutes.  The Artist and Betty chatted up a storm, as the IV fluids and meds she’d been given were already having a positive impact on her condition.  Watching me sleep, Betty told The Artist it was the longest time she’d ever seen me not talking or making noise.  She’s funny... I love her like crazy.

By the time 2AM rolled around, the ER tests were completed.  She had an aggressive and dangerous e-coli urinary tract infection, was severely malnourished and dehydrated, her blood chemistry was all over the map, a virulent candidae thrush infection was ravaging her mouth and throat, her blood pressure was fluctuating wildly, her white blood cell count was alarmingly high, she was unable to walk and her condition was extremely unstable.  However, she was responding well to the IV fluids, was eating ice chips and talking and smiling and her beautiful blue eyes were shining and we sat there, marveling at her strength and composure under such dire circumstances.  By 3AM, she was slated to be taken up to her room, so we decided it was time to mosey on back home, get some sleep and come back the next day to see how things were going.  The drive home seemed to take forever, and after only a couple of hours of sleep, I dragged my skinny ass off to work, where I was less than useless. For the entire day.

BUT WE DID IT.

I look back on that 9-hour timespan, from the moment I jumped outta the shower at 6PM to the drive home at 3AM and think, yep, lots of things could have gone wrong and kept us from making what happened... happen.  If my burrito had been made in 5 minutes instead of 20 and we’d gotten to the care facility earlier than we did, I might have totally missed seeing the infamous Dr. Kim and lost the chance to confront her in person.  We could most definitely have gotten in an accident during that insane freeway chase.  We could have lost sight of the ambulance and, if they had not gone where they said they were going (it does happen), Betty would have gone missing, slipping into the darkness and from our grasp as the moon rose and the stars shone and the Earth spun, leaving us lost and seething and desperate to find her.  Lots of things could have happened, but on this one night, everything worked out.

WE DID IT.

Little did we know that Betty’s mysterious medical journey was just beginning, oh yes.  She would spend another 12 days in hospital, then 5 weeks in a convalescent hospital, with the weirdest arc of illness and symptoms any of us had ever seen, not to mention her many doctors.  There were dead-ends for one diagnosis after another, wrong turns and ineffective treatments. At one point, she was considered to be in a chronic degenerative state called encephalopathy that would never improve, and we were instructed to get used to her condition.  You can bet your ass after what we’d all been through, that diagnosis was soundly rejected. We pushed forward and demanded one last test, a semi-dangerous spinal tap, only to discover that we made the right choice. Betty’s illness was finally, FINALLY and correctly identified as spinal meningitis and aggressively treated, with her subsequent recovery almost startling.

Within a week or so she came home with a feeding tube stuck in her belly (don’t ask), a medical bed in her living room, a live-in nurse, a tabletop covered with meds, loss of privacy and a months-long slow-but-steady recovery.  She’ll likely never get back to 100%, but she is strong and determined and is now walking without her walker and cooks and cleans and does most of what she was doing before the day she got dizzy and fell.  Whatever her limitations may be now, we are all grateful for her amazing fighting spirit to get back as much of her previous life as possible, and we marvel at what she has achieved.

For me, the moral of this tale is:  STAY ENGAGED IN YOUR HEALTH CARE DECISIONS.  If we had listened to any one of the many doctors who wrote her off as untreatable, we’d be visiting her in hospice care, looking at the shell of a woman whose health had been lost.  From the night we broke her out of that horrible nursing facility to the day she finally returned home, I kept voluminous daily notes in my ‘Betty Book’: her daily med intake, her doctor’s comments, her bloodwork, WBC levels, food intake, temp and blood pressure, ANYTHING that related to her care.   Every night The Artist and I talked for hours about what we knew, what we didn’t know, what the doctors said and how full of shit we thought they usually were.  But all along, we paid attention, asked hard questions and never EVER took ‘I don’t know’ as a serious answer.  It just didn’t compute.

A lot can happen in a lifetime.  A lot can happen in 9 hours, too.  Every hour, every minute, every second we have in our conscious existence is precious.  Every decision we make has ramifications which are evident and obvious, but that also sometimes fly below the radar and disappear without us ever knowing about them.  Take nothing for granted… not your life, not your significant other, not your health… nothing about our lives should ever be without purpose or meaning, unless you choose to make it so by doing nothing and ceding your life decisions to others.

I like to tell people that I’ve been lucky in my life to have two Mothers-In-Law that I really loved and that loved me back.  The first one has recently left this mortal coil, but after several years of her hating my guts, she finally figgered out (after I spent hours and hours sitting at her hospital bedside) that I was pretty OK.  Betty lets me hang around her house at the holidaze, so I reckon I’m OK by her too.  I’m just glad that The Artist and I were in the right place, at the right time, with the right attitude and drive, to make a difference in her life for the better. 

 

A human being can’t ask for a more useful purpose than that.

“Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.” –Og Mandino, writer, speaker (1923-1996)

(Lead image, gracias de www.mjjlawfirm.com; War 'Slippin Into Darkness' and Harry Nilsson 'Think About Your Troubles' videos, muchismas gracias de youtube.com.)

 

The Long Pink Tube

While ruminating on the Republican surge in the House of Representatives earlier this month, I am reminded that for many voters, history seems to have started on January 20, 2009. You know, the day that Barack Obama was inaugurated to be the first socialist communist marxist fascist illegal alien arrogant usurper President of the United States. Kenyan, also. Too.

The House of Representatives will soon be controlled by esteemed politicians who (for the most part) deny the phenomenon of climate change, deny the scientific facts of evolution and natural selection, and deny that our gay brothers and sisters are, you know, equal to everyone else.

I mention these facts as preface to a commentary I wrote in 2005 regarding the sad tale of Terri Schiavo, the Florida woman who languished in a nursing home for 15 years in a persistent vegetative state. Her husband Michael tried for 7 years to fulfill her wishes to prevent 'heroic measures' to be used in order to keep her alive.

Naturally, the Republicans in power at the time screeched and pitched and foamed over the issue. They condemned Michael for his choices, questioned his morality and intent and even convinced then-President Bush to cut short one of his numerous extended vacations to sign a bill that sought to interfere with the rights of private citizens Terri and Michael Schiavo.

I wrote this commentary to try and emote how I was feeling at the time, because I was also deeply involved in a similar situation, albeit without all the publicity. I submit this now because I want people to remember that the Republicans all boast about being the party of individual freedoms, but will jump in your shit and screw you (us) over if your personal individual choices don't match with their narrow viewpoint. The more things change, the more they stay the same... how sad and pathetic a realization that is for me now, looking to January 2011 and the resurgance of the Right-wing 'moral authority'.

THE LONG PINK TUBE (2005)
As Terri Schiavo lies in her Florida hospice bed, slowly winding down a life filled with tragedy and loss, I am left pondering the reality that soon enough I, too will have to make decisions about life and death, tube or no tube, to be or not to be…. not for me, of course, but for my Mother, who lies in a Santa Ana nursing home with a feeding tube stuck into her belly.

I feel horrible for Michael Schiavo, and not just because his wife has become the central figure in the latest battle over whose morals will emerge victorious in our Red vs. Blue Nation. Michael has made a commitment to do for Terri what he knows in his heart is right, what Terri asked him to do, no matter how many people call him a murderer or a lousy husband or an evil person. The law is apparently (supposedly) on his side, but that doesn’t matter to the ‘Let Terri Live’ zealots who have decided they know better than he does, regardless of how little they really understand his situation and what it means to him emotionally, philosophically and spiritually.

I know what Michael Schiavo is feeling, albeit to a lesser extent. Over the last two years, my Mom’s declining health has seen her go from living independently in a small duplex apartment and into a series of hospitals, assisted-care and nursing homes. My role as her eldest son (and the only family member she hasn’t yet burned) has mutated into sole guardianship for her, or ‘representative payee’ as the Social Security Administration now officially lists me on their computerized records. For good or ill, I am now a specialist when it comes to government entitlements and benefits, MediCal issues, nursing home administrators and the relative costs of adult diapers.

Mom’s life story has been run, and five decades of alcoholism and cigarettes and multiple strokes and falls and broken bones have left her debilitated and frail, reduced to a bed-ridden 75-lb. shadow of her former self. Her litany of aliments reads like a search result from WebMD.com – hypertension, diabetes, osteoporosis, failed kidneys, failed liver, anemia, aspiration, stroke-related loss of her arms and legs, inability to swallow food or fluids – a real witches brew of maladies.

On top of everything else, her new wheelchair has arrived just in time to roll her down the Alzheimer’s Highway. Her journey includes reverting to her native Mexican language, loss of recognition for her remaining family and the blank stare darkness that we should all dread while we can. The Long Pink Tube continues to flow nourishment into her stomach and, for the time being, she is still mostly awake and alert enough to smile at me when I visit her twice a week, although she doesn’t remember the last time I visited and it takes her a while to remember who I am and why I'm sitting at her bedside.

I think of Michael and Terri Schiavo a lot these days, especially after my visits to Mom when she has been crying and flailing and calling out to her older brother who died five years ago, or just gives me ‘the look’ and moves her mouth with no sounds coming out. How long will her body survive when her mind has totally gone away and left her as an empty shell, her stomach sucking on that Long Pink Tube and giving her another day/week/month/year of empty existence?

I think to myself, “Self, how will you deal with the decision on whether Mom should continue to live a lost life or to die with dignity? When is too much life enough? Isn’t she really already gone, save for the final series of days filled with tears and anguish and heartache?” The decisions to come are MINE ALONE… I am by-default the person who will have the buck in hand when it stops. Neither George Bush or Tom DeLay or Randall Terry or Jeb Bush or the United States Congress has a say in the matter, and I have the official paperwork to prove it.

Only those who are forced to experience the sorrows that end-of-life decisions can bring will know how deep the burn can be… just look into Michael Schiavo’s eyes during yet another television interview and see the sadness this whole insane saga has burrowed into his soul. I see him looking at me from the TV screen and I can see myself in his eyes, grappling with the same choices he’s had to fight to make. Only difference is, my decisions will go totally unnoticed and will be made without the glare of notoriety… at least I have that to look forward to.

I love my Mother more than I can say, and will do what I feel is right for her when the time comes, especially with the knowledge that her ‘Do Not Resuscitate’ form is already signed and on file at Nurse’s Station #1 in Santa Ana, California. I also know that as she slides into the cerebral ether, she can trust my judgment as her #1 Son. Right now, for both her and me, that’s all that matters... everyone else can just bugger off.

POSTSCRIPT
Mom passed away quietly in the night a few weeks after I wrote this commentary, but earlier that day my wife, myself and my Aunt (Mom's former sister-in-law and best friend) spent several hours at her bedside, talking and crying and laughing and reminiscing about Mom's life and struggles. Apparently she'd had another stroke the night before and was unconscious for the entire time we were there, but that fact is that WE WERE THERE, whether she knew it or not. I didn't have to make 'the decision', but clearing out her belongings the morning after she died was an exercise in bemused sorrow and guilty relief.

I shudder to think that once again we'll see a revitalized Republican Party inserting their skewed vision of morality into our lives, telling us who we can or cannot marry, who is or is not a 'patriot' or an 'American', or what private and personal medical decisions can or cannot be freely exercised. They are the same people who were screaming last summer about death panels and unplugging Grandma and branding universal healthcare as socialism. They are the ones who decided they knew best for Terri Schiavo over the legal, ethical and moral perogatives of Michael Schiavo.

I think of Mom every day, and I miss her terribly... her nasty but funny sense of humor, how she used to flip me off as I was leaving her bedside, how she would laugh and gag as we'd watch her telenovelas with the sound off while I made up my own insane dialog. Those were the times when I knew that she knew that I would make things OK for her when she was no longer able to.

R.I.P. Alicia Teresa Macias

(Image courtesy of www.mrdestructo.com)