The Heart of the Matter of Life - Thoughts at a New Point of Living
Posted: Friday, April 30, 2010
by Jean Purcell
OpineBooks.com
For decades heart disease can be controllable in an individual, and then with age or other complications it begins to show itself more clearly and dangerously. As many of my readers know, my beloved friend and the mother of my husband lived with us for eleven years and in the last few years was in quickly failing health. You may remember that she was blind, as well.
We knew that Mary Helen used the added reasoning of faith, and we accompanied her on that valiant journey. She succeeded where perhaps as another kind of person she might have failed. She never stopped trying, for she valued life so much. Even when she said, "I'm ready for God to take me," she continued the same routines of exercise--by then from bed--and watching her diet and personal care, with help from others.
We saw how fear does grip the sufferer of heart disease. For Mary Helen, fear was aroused at times when she found it hard to breathe, even with the help of the oxygen that flowed from the oxygen machine in her room that hummed day and night. That difficulty catching the next breath, when it happened, frightened her and us. Usually, checking the oxygen level to raise it a little and also giving her a prescribed anxiety medication helped reduce the tension that can cause such breathlessness to arise.
In the final days, nurses explained to us that digestion requires the body to exert itself, and this can create added strain on an endangered heart. That helped us not to worry as much or seek to insist that Mary Helen eat when she did not want to do so. Eventually, liquids also become almost "too much" for her at times.
We shared everything with her in a new kind of intimacy that I will always treasure. It was an honor to care for her and a great gift to have hospice personnel in our home daily, coming and going. We had such good contacts with volunteers, as well, for reading to her and praying with her often. During the high snows of this past winter, they came as usual. Somehow they got out of their homes and somehow we were able to clear enough space for them to get into the driveway and up a walkway narrowed by mounds of snow, into our home.
What I most remember the day she went into a hospice facility six days before she died is the picture of the nurse and her close health care worker sitting beside her, one on each side. I heard their soft tones as they tenderly tried to prepare her for a trip she would sleep through, to the hospice center. The tenderness was from two people Mary Helen had loved and reached out to in return from the beginning.
If you have a loved one in a serious medical situation, my hope is that you will not fear only, but will also be assured that God can help you day by day. We cannot know what each day of illness and decline may bring. We can wonder if we can manage. Yet, we can rise to what we never thought possible. Love, which guards the heart, enables us beyond the norm, in tiredness, worry, and the long good-bye. I know that the love of Christ was very much felt by us in the most late and tired hours, as our loved one struggled. There is much to rejoice about now, for she is well and seeing again, in heaven with God.
It is good to write again after a long time away. I wish all SearchWarp friends all the best, with many blessings.
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Top-level comments on this article: (2 total)Have been missing you Jean! Glad you are back. Focused on what really matters - I love what you write!
I too am glad you are back Jean. It is good that you know your mother in law is at home with the Lord.This is Linda DeWitt.
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