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Feb. 7th, 2013 12:03 amA woman I've known for about 26 years is on pallative care now. Her daughter, who is my oldest friend (next to my husband) wrote to let us know that it has reached that stage - five different chemo treatments have achieved nothing but dragging weariness and pain for her and it is time to let her slip away.
Her daughter said that she likes cards. That each one she has received has gone up on her wall where she can see them (barely, as one of the treatments triggered macular degeneration). I want to send her a card. I've been brooding about it for a couple of days now but am stumped... "Get well soon" cards are surely not going to do. Friendship ones should, I think, and funny ones would be good. I'm half-tempted to create my own.
As far as I know, there isn't much I can write that would be comforting to her. If she has a faith, I've never known it. She doesn't attend church and the only Bible in her house is the handed-down family one. Her husband's funeral didn't have a chaplain. So writing about God, or Heaven, or any of that (I do know that she is not Pagan in any form) would most likely be empty words for her.
She's not a very intelligent lady - sweet in her own way, but dim, so poetry and such would just be gobbly-gook. NIce to hear but not particularily interesting.
There's a part of me that wants to tell her to not be afraid. I died twice so far, at least that is what the doctors said (and I had the sore ribs and puncture marks to back up their accounts) and both times I experienced the Renowned Near Death Experience. I make light of it here but both incidences affected me very deeply. And the first one was so - - reassuring. I absolutely knew, to the bottom of my soul, that death of the body was just a passing thing, a stop on my way to something else. I remember feeling so loved and so treasured, and, if you'd believe it, so respected... not like some great big personage, but as someone worthy, in a manner I have never really experienced here on this earth. (Don't flinch - I'm mostly just oblivious. My childhood taught me not to value myself so even though my friends do value me, I have more of an intellectual awareness of it than I felt at the moment of my death experience.) Anyway, I'd like to reassure her, to tell her that it is not frightening but wonderful - it was hard to choose to ocme back. Duty and love required it but I gotta say, staying was very, very tempting.
But somehow I don't think that is the sort of thing I should write to a woman with a long decline ahead of her. They say it will be months, maybe all the way into summer before she is finally at peace.
So what do I write? What do I say? a simple signature isn't going to cut it. I've slept in this woman's house, eaten her bread and salt, laughed, argued, and talked with her for years and years.
And I have nothing but a vacumm in my mind while I try to do something as simple as send her a silly card to lighten her day. I want to send her one once a week or so but the first one is a very tall hurdle for me.
Her daughter said that she likes cards. That each one she has received has gone up on her wall where she can see them (barely, as one of the treatments triggered macular degeneration). I want to send her a card. I've been brooding about it for a couple of days now but am stumped... "Get well soon" cards are surely not going to do. Friendship ones should, I think, and funny ones would be good. I'm half-tempted to create my own.
As far as I know, there isn't much I can write that would be comforting to her. If she has a faith, I've never known it. She doesn't attend church and the only Bible in her house is the handed-down family one. Her husband's funeral didn't have a chaplain. So writing about God, or Heaven, or any of that (I do know that she is not Pagan in any form) would most likely be empty words for her.
She's not a very intelligent lady - sweet in her own way, but dim, so poetry and such would just be gobbly-gook. NIce to hear but not particularily interesting.
There's a part of me that wants to tell her to not be afraid. I died twice so far, at least that is what the doctors said (and I had the sore ribs and puncture marks to back up their accounts) and both times I experienced the Renowned Near Death Experience. I make light of it here but both incidences affected me very deeply. And the first one was so - - reassuring. I absolutely knew, to the bottom of my soul, that death of the body was just a passing thing, a stop on my way to something else. I remember feeling so loved and so treasured, and, if you'd believe it, so respected... not like some great big personage, but as someone worthy, in a manner I have never really experienced here on this earth. (Don't flinch - I'm mostly just oblivious. My childhood taught me not to value myself so even though my friends do value me, I have more of an intellectual awareness of it than I felt at the moment of my death experience.) Anyway, I'd like to reassure her, to tell her that it is not frightening but wonderful - it was hard to choose to ocme back. Duty and love required it but I gotta say, staying was very, very tempting.
But somehow I don't think that is the sort of thing I should write to a woman with a long decline ahead of her. They say it will be months, maybe all the way into summer before she is finally at peace.
So what do I write? What do I say? a simple signature isn't going to cut it. I've slept in this woman's house, eaten her bread and salt, laughed, argued, and talked with her for years and years.
And I have nothing but a vacumm in my mind while I try to do something as simple as send her a silly card to lighten her day. I want to send her one once a week or so but the first one is a very tall hurdle for me.
