A Dress Rehearsal for Death

I'm reading the article with tears streaming down my face. I know Fay, and have met her wonderful children, and the thought of the world without her is almost too much. But they started a conversation in my heart, and I know I have to have with the conversation with my two children. It's time. thank you Monona, Duncan and of course Fay, for sharing your life with me.

It's a beautiful article about a beautiful family. Humans are inherently messy and ungraceful about death. We're not wired to see it as an important part of life. Monona, Duncan, and Fay have made something graceful of the messiness of death. Bravo.

I am Asian-American and my parents grew up in similar circumstances in China. They are both in their early eighties. As Monona mentioned, most elderly Chinese do not talk about death because of superstition that it will hasten their own death. We are one of those families. My parents have refused to write a will much less a DNR. I know I will bear the burden of navigating the unknown when their time comes. I applaud Monona's mom for her courage and openness.

This is a beautiful article. And though it may be rather shallow to say, you have a great-looking family!

So at least two physicians weren't able to see that your mother wasn't actually dying, including that she had fluid build-up in her lung? It took a nurse to come in and diagnose that she wasn't dying? This is kind of confusing to me.

Monona Yin has written a quite wonderful article, not only telling a compelling story, and crediting the health care professionals she encountered in the course of it, but also leading us to the central insight she--and her family, and her elderly mother--learned along the way: "We made better decisions because we listened to one another and weighed all the conflicting information." We should all do the same, when we find ourselves in the same situation. Let's hear more from this writer.

Yes, yes, yes... and a shout out to all hospice nurses! These wonderful, empathetic, unsung heroes who hold hands, dry tears, point the way, explain the inevitable, guide the living gently into death, and keep the rest of us waving our handkerchiefs in a tearful bon voyage, and then go home exhausted to their own families, problems, and have their phones on alert in case we call. They are underpaid, under appreciated, and deserving of praise... and here again, is one such angel pulling the patient back gently from the abyss and saying, no no, not yet.

All patients should have a health care directive, especially if you or your loved one suffers from a chronic or life threatening condition. One such document is called 5 wishes. It clearly spells out each and every wish that the patient wants to employ during their treatments and at the end of life.

I have metastatic breast cancer and have given considerable thought to my death. I do not welcome it. And I find that I am not yet ready for it. There are still things I want to accomplish. With the help of my loving and supportive family, I am making my way through a challenging to-do list, consisting of logistical and financial matters, soul-searching reading, outreach to distant family and friends, and considering how to improve what I will leave behind. As I make my way down the list, I become calmer and a little more accepting of the fact of death. I’m not ready to die, but I’m getting closer.

My mother, who Monona mentioned in her article, died after my family and I spent a difficult day waiting for the inevitable. It was heart-wrenching. When we left, she felt comfortable enough to leave as well. When my father was dying from cancer he was in our home until the very end surrounded by his loved ones. It's still difficult for me to discuss death but my mother always said she was living with cancer not dying from it. I guess we should celebrate life.

Love this. As a hospice physician I remember the those times when I was the one to say a patient that everyone else thought was imminently dying was not actually imminently dying. People don’t realize the challenges after you have already accepted the imminent death to then have to go down the path of not dying imminently. And YES to centering end of life discussions on what makes life worth living. So often people forget that most people do want to live and the question isn’t just do you want to live/die but what makes life worth living.

That´s a beautiful story about life, death and learning by a remarkable lineage of women. The book Riding With the Wind is very beautiful and intense too. Thanks Monona for sharing those stories.

There really is no such thing as a good death—but that’s life.