Pondering your Mortality

or because it is inevitable, do we simply block it out?

Photo by Marco De Waal on Unsplash

For the last 10 days I have been helping my husband and his brothers care for their Mother at her home as she slips away from cancer.

It’s been an interesting time. On one hand, it has been an honour to assist with her care. To show her love and respect, and to support the rest of the family as they lose their Mum.

But to be perfectly honest, it has also been, hmmm …. gruesomely interesting. Which makes me feel awful admitting, like I am some heartless, cold fish. But I have never been close to death like this. This is new. All my grandparents have passed, but they were fairly sudden and quite clinical moments— fall ill or have a heart attack, be admitted to hospital and then its all over pretty quickly.

But I have been here 12 days now and while there was a steady decline over the first 8 days or so — more tiredness, a growing difficulty in getting out of bed and a decreasing appetite — in the last few days there have been rapid, sometimes hourly, changes. Some have been physically quite marked, some more subtle, but I think that as I am a bit more removed from the emotional impact of witnessing this than her sons, I can look at it a bit more objectively, with a “that’s kind of interesting” curiosity, whereas…