aka Mom

Marjory J. Wagner (aka "Aunt Irish" to my Dad's family, aka Mommahosaa, as she is known among my Clay friends) passed away on Sunday, August 3, 2008.



This falls under the category of Unexpected but Not Surprising. The move to long-term care at the nursing home wasn't because her fractured hip didn't heal, but because her emphysema and weakening heart made the physical therapy untenable. She knew she would never be able to take care of herself, so she accepted her "prison" with better humor than I expected.

In fact, she'd been doing pretty well. Her former interests interested her once again. I'd brought her an old abandoned needlepoint project. We talked nearly every evening, about an hour, usually about nothing in particular.

I laughed when she started complaining - about other people who complained so much! I was lucky to have the last few months of her undivided attention. The alcohol that had been taking away her memory, her personality, was out of the picture (even though I know she still wanted it).

She knew what was coming. She died exactly as she said she would: an apparently massive heart attack and relatively little lingering, just 17 hours.

In looking through her things for photos to display at the funeral yesterday, I found some note pages she'd tucked away. She wrote these words as her younger sister was dying in 1992:

I'm watching my sister die. She is three years younger than I. She is much more intelligent, more educated, and a much nicer person. I watch her gradual fading away - wondering at the tenacity of the human spirit. She has planned everything - giving her faithful daughter power of attorney, disposing of all she owns to her two children.

As I watch, giving whatever comfort and solace I can, many questions plague me, making for often sleepless nights. She has always advocated a "living will" - no special efforts by man or machine to prolong life. Yet, I see her frightened with each traumatic episode - concerned that each medication be available as needed. I see the terrible stress put upon her loving, faithful daughter, who is taking care of everything, fortunately supported by a loving, understanding husband.

She cannot recover - the damage of heart and lungs is too severe and is only progressing to an inevitable end. The cost of this gradual dying prodcedure is astronomical. Not just the cost in drugs, therapy, hospital, hospice, nursing, ambulance, etc. - but the cost in stress and anxiety, and cost to those who love her and make such efforts to support and sustain her.

One of these days, my turn will come. My loving and supportive children are on the other side of the country, engrossed in their own lives as they should be. Will I be so afraid of death that I will imperil them and their future? Can I organize my affairs as reasonably as my sister has? Can I find a way to die without inflicting such trauma and burdens on those I love?

I love my sister and do not want to let her go. But I know she will fairly soon - and I hate the watching and waiting - and what it is doing to those she loves. She is the kindest, most unselfish person I've ever known. How miserable it must be to die so slowly, inflicting such pain on the children she loves above all else.

I think that must be one of my reasons in retiring cross-country from my children. In spite of my spend-thrift ways, I don't think I will ever be dependent upon them, although they may not inherit much. My health insurance and annuity should take care of my needs - and if I should become "terminal," I pray I will have the gumption to end it quickly somehow.

These morbid thoughts haunt me, affecting my usual joy in life and all that it still offers. I must cling to my own life plan, give what I can to my dying sister and her children, and leave a little to subsist on for the sake of myself and my children.

Somehow, I must not only cope with these concerns as an aging person among those in the prime of life, but must somehow do this whole bit gracefully. It seems as though my contemporaries are dropping like flies. But I am still relatively healthy and active. I must not allow these concerns to impinge upon my work or on my relationships. If I do, I will negate my lifetime philosophy - keeping private and hidden any problems or grief rather than inflicting personal problems on others.

I suppose I'll always be one of those who "gripe" and "complain"; but hopefully those who know me realize its lack of meaning. This is a difficult period for me. Hopefully I will survive intact.

My aunt died in 1992 at the age of 64.

Mom outlived all of her siblings, my father, and his siblings. That was painful to her, too. It's hard to understand why she didn't feel that her longevity was a success story. But her life was so full that I think this is what depressed her most about growing old. She couldn't do all that she wanted to. And when you're active all your life, inactivity equals death.

I'm sad but not devastated. I know I did what I could for her. Maybe even too much - it's hard for an independent person to accept help. She said I worried too much, and she's probably right. But one thing I know now that I should have known all along:

No one will love you the way your mom does.