writing to a very dear friend who's father is bedridden and who does not have too many days left to live, trying to offer words of comfort and strength, I realized that it is not the illness or the fact that one has the loved one only for a few more days that really stresses us out. It is the end of the familiar - familiar daily routine, familiar ways of the person, familiar round of duties, a familiar way of life that we have got used to - it is the end of our regular family day, it is the end of the comfort of knowing that we don't have to worry about the mundane, regular things of life, it is the end of planned expenditure, it is the end of a chapter, most probably.....it is the end of what we have come to accept as our normal...it is the end of what we believe is our due, without really having thought about it...it is the end of a comfortable way of life...in fact, it is our world turned on its head...It is also getting used to a new way of life, it is having to deal with uncomfortable thoughts, it is knowing that certain things have to be dealt with and there is no tomorrow to push it off it, or no comfortable carpet to push it under, it is coming face-to-face with reality, as it were......and that is surely the most difficult thing to deal with.....our comfort zone is smashed....
With a loved invalid, or semi-invalid who we know has not much longer to live, life now has to be re-worked around that person....we strive to make each day count....we try to deal with thoughts and feelings hitherto unknown....we try to cope.....and this is besides dealing, sometimes rather helplessly, with seeing the loved one suffer...
We buckle under this, we fight it, we do not accept it, we think and say out loud, hoping it will come true, that this is a passing phase....and deep down we know that there is no way out, or around----we have to deal with it....and this is nub of it all.
And yet, after the fighting with ourselves is over, a new pattern emerges which, in fact, is also beautiful...