It was a blessing, really. Isn’t that what is always said? A blessing to be released from pain, suffering, uncertainty and fear? In my short time of knowing C. ~ I feel confident in the knowledge that I helped her with everything I could to make her comfortable and pain-free. Probably one of the most frustrating things about situations like this is not the physical pain and symptoms. But it’s the emotional and spiritual pain and demons that I’m unable to treat and make go away.
I like to think - from what I could see, that C. had the opportunity in her last weeks to make her peace with each different family member and friend - thankful that she still had her mind up until the very few last days so that she was able to say her goodbyes and show her love. “Whoever in is charge of such things”, she said, “I wish someone would light a fire under their arse.” She wanted to go - - she was waiting for it and had accepted it and was actually looking forward to it as a new life, so to speak. “Who knows what lies in wait on the other side?”, she told me one day. “I’ve done plenty here - I’m done now.”
Is it that these people know something that the rest of us mere mortals don’t know? Or is it just resignation and acceptance of the inevitable? On that particular Saturday - she was having one of those lucid moments of clarity that were few and far between because of the Dilaudid and Duragesic ~ she was sitting up in bed playing cards with her family and telling stories about her days on the farm as a young girl. She loves flowers, she shared with me. “I’ll take the images of those pretty Mums with me where ever it is that I go afterwards”, she promised.
I’m really glad now that the purple Mums in my garden multiplied as much as they did this fall - - so much so that I was able to separate them and take 5 of the hearty Mum plants with purple flowers out to C’s house that Saturday. The image of those very purple Mums that she carried with her today ~ Wherever it is she went.
5:41 pm on October 28th, 2007
[...] with the archives I was able to restore… this blog starts with a post I did about Purple Mums and a patient I took care of back then. In the last 5 years of this blog [...]