Go Your Own Way

I believe in dying on your own terms. Death, like life is complicated. Emotions, fears, opinions, and logistics invade the decision making process, often the loudest voices drowning out those of the one dying. When my eighty-two-year-old father was nearing the end of the road following a long battle with cancer, I told my parents that I would support whatever decision they made. This loving couple of nearly sixty years decided on hospice care and it was my father’s desire to live out his final days at home. Perhaps not the easiest choice, but his decision just the same. After all, he had recently lived through the death of two of his seven children; one in a hospital and the other in a hospice home.

Under the guidance of a skilled and compassionate hospice team, a multi-generational family faction captained by the strength of his wife and anchored by that of his granddaughter tended to my father’s daily needs. It was not easy. Family members weighed in feeling that it might be better for Dad to be in a facility where he could receive round the clock care. At one point, the nurse said that it was too dangerous for my father to be up and that bathroom trips were no longer permissible. My youngest brother felt it was demoralizing for Dad to have his daughter and granddaughter change his diapers. Mom wanted to just let him try, to see if he still could. We did, he couldn’t. He lacked mobility yet was surrounded by love.

Supporting my father’s decision to die at home was a manifestation of my parents’ lesson to respect my elders. I still address the parents of my childhood friends as Mr. and Mrs. and make a point of acknowledging the elderly before all others at any gathering I attend. The elderly deserve our time, attention, and respect; and they have earned it. A recent Oscar acceptance speech by actor J.K. Simmons implored the audience to call their parents and listen for as long as they wanted to talk. Well said. I am so grateful that I had the privilege of being there for my parents as they have been for me; and allowing my father the power to die on his own terms was his parental lesson coming full circle.

After eight days of in-home hospice, my father died. In the end, in spite of the cruelties of cancer, my father left this world in the comfort of his own home; serenaded by Frank Sinatra, wrapped in his granddaughter’s pink Snuggie; loved and cared for by the people that he had loved and cared for his entire life. He did it his way.