In God’s time

Among my generation who are “in the zone,” the question of how we wish or hope to die is high On our list of concerns. Heaven knows, we attend enough wakes to alert us to the possibility that we, too, will be lying in state someday. Thus, the “living will,” a document addressed to doctors stating one’s wishes for end-of-life medical care in case one is unable to communicate his decisions, has become part of the conversation among seniors.

A friend who lives alone has asked his best friend to make decisions for him under the California Advance Health Care Directive should he be unable to do it on his own. A variation on the living will, the directive gives a person a say on how he wants to be treated if he gets very sick by appointing a health care agent who can make the decisions if he is too sick to make them himself.

It is all well and good to have our end-of-life plans written down, maybe even notarized. But we really have no say on how and when we will die.

When my mother turned 79, she told me that she didn’t want to live much longer. She spoke longingly about her wish to be reunited with her parents, our Dad and her siblings who had died ahead. So when she had a major stroke a few days later, I felt that my determined mother might have willed herself to have one. All 10 of her children gathered at her bedside hoping and praying for the best. But it soon became clear that she would not recover. The damage to her brain was extensive and heroic efforts to extend her life would be futile.

Mom had repeatedly told us that if something like this happened to her, she didn’t want us to employ heroics to try and get her back. She hated the idea of being plugged into machines, the most hateful of which was the respirator. Just pull the plug, she commanded each of us at some point in our lives. She abhorred the idea of being kept artificially alive.

So the discussion began. Should we follow Mom’s wishes and remove her from the respirator, and let her wither away? We siblings were divided. Tempers flared. Then we realized that the decision was not ours to make. Mom had remarried and her husband had the last word on the matter.

He agreed to pull the plug and we waited. Although she never woke up, Mom’s condition stabilized. She was brought home with only oxygen to make her comfortable. But she had 24-hour nursing care and she was meticulously cleaned, her meals and vitamins fed through a tube, and her feet and legs were massaged regularly. When she developed a cold, a doctor was called to prescribe antibiotics. This went on for two and a half years until one evening in September, we got a call that Mom had finally passed away.

I always thought Mom would have been uncomfortable with this setup where her precise instructions were being violated. Besides, the practical person she was, she would balk at the humungous expense of keeping her body, which would never get well, alive. After over a year of waiting and worrying that Mom was surely miserable in her condition, we were offered the services of a woman who had the ability to communicate with coma patients.

Through the medium, Mom told us not to worry about her mortal body. Her spirit was elsewhere doing soul work, learning virtues she needed to acquire before she could “cross over.” She was so close, she said, she could see her loved ones “on the other side.”

I then realized that as she lay helpless on her hospital bed in her home, she wasn’t wasting time. So much was going on. Mom was busy purifying herself for heaven. What a comforting concept! It was not enough that she went through virtual purgatory on earth when she was arrested and detained by the Marcos martial law administration. God gave Mom the grace to prepare for eternal life in the quiet of soul work where she had to imbibe positive lessons that she, in turn, communicated to us, her family, through the medium.

Mom left this life in God’s time. Not even her indomitable will could change that.