Missing out?

This week, while talking with my grandmother, there was an aspect of terminal illness in middle adulthood that I realized I had not addressed and that really made me think. My grandmother reminded me of my mother's friend that passed away from cancer when she was 37. My mother was with her for a few weeks before she died and my mother was saying that her friend was so sad and that she kept saying that she would have done so many things differently if she could do it over. While I'm sure that would be the case for most of us, my mother's friend was talking about how she concentrated so much of her life and love on her career and was so focused on being successful that she had a failed marriage and no children. She was saying that on one hand, she was happy that she was not leaving anyone behind but on the other hand, she was sad because she had no loved ones and had focused all of her attention on the wrong things in life. This made me think about the fact that, with a terminal illness comes time, although it is limited, it is still time to think and to ponder and to wish you could turn back the hands of time. This is an aspect of terminal illness that I think would be exceptionally difficult. I take for granted the ability that I have to desire something different out of life and to go out and make it happen and the majority of people with a terminal illness do not have that ability. Regret is a hard emotion to deal with and I just wonder how many people that do have a terminal illness live with regret.

Terminal Illness as it relates to The Sum of Us

For this blog entry, I chose to relate it to the film The Sum of Us that we recently viewed in class. Watching Jeff care for Harry reminded me of how my neighbor's mother cares for him. He is fifty years old and she baths him, helps him go to the bathroom, dresses him and even has to feed him each meal. While Harry did not have a terminal illness, he still required as much care as someone that does. The role reversal in The Sum of Us blew my mind. It was like overnight, Jeff became completely responsible for someone that used to be completely responsible for him. I think terminal illness encompasses these same issues, espicially in middle adulthood. I was talking to a hospice worker the other day and she was telling me how one of her clients right now is a 37 year old mother of two. The woman's children are 5 and 11 and the hospice worker was saying how the 11 year old helps her mother bath and gets her younger sister ready for school in the mornings and helps her dad get dinner ready in the evenings. The family just discovered the woman was dying in March and the hospice worker said that she will not live until Christmas this year. So basically this child went from having little to no responsibility 7 months ago to having more responsiblity than most adults. It just blows my mind, but then I wonder, what choice did Jeff have, what choice does this little girl have...it's your family and you conform and do what it takes to care for them.

When to let go....

First, I want to thank you all for your comments. I look foward to reading the comments from my blog each week that everyone leaves. So, I've been thinking pretty hard about what I wanted to discuss this week regarding terminal illness in middle adulthood and it was almost like the decision was made for me. My neighbor, the man with Lou Gehrig's disease, is not doing very well at all. His 19 year old daughter, that he raised alone, is close friends with my younger sister and she and my sister were talking this week. Her friend was very upset stating that her father's illness had taken a turn for the worse and that the doctors were telling she and her grandmother that he would not make it much longer. She was very sad while talking to my sister, however, she said something that really made me think. She said that she felt a bit guilty for wanting him to fight so hard to stay here with her, while he was in so much pain and was so tired of fighting. I began to wonder if this doesn't make it more difficult on the person with the illness. It is like they are the ones suffering, yet they still try to hold on for their loved ones. I have heard people say that their loved ones would not let go until they had their blessing. While I have never experienced this first hand, it did remind me of what my dad told me regarding my paternal grandmother's death in 2007. He told me that she had been in the hospital for a while and he went out of the country on business. He said that when she got to the worst point of her illness, she kept telling her nurses she wanted to see my dad. My dad said that when he got there, three days later, he told her that he loved her and that he would be okay and knew he would see her again and she immeadiately died. I would like to think that if I had a family member that was dying and I knew they were suffering, I would give them my blessing and try to put my feelings aside, in order to make them more comfortable with letting go; however, I think this goes back to one of those things where you have to experience it to truly know how you would react.

Terminall Illness as it Relates to The Upside of Anger

For this blog entry, I thought I would attempt to relate it to the movie we just viewed, The Upside of Anger. I loved this movie. I thought it was a great choice for this class. At first I had a hard time wondering how I could relate my blog topic of terminal illness in middle adulthood to this film. However, the more I thought about it the more I figured it out. Wether a person dies of terminal illness, of a freak accident or abandons their family, the family still has to deal with the loss. I suppose some of the emotions that they experience are different, being that with terminal illness you know the inevitable will occur, while with unexpected death, it catches the family off guard. However, I am not convinced this makes the loss any easier; the feeling is still there. In The Upside of Anger, Grey's family was devestated that he was gone; even when they thought he left with his secretary, they, especially Terry, experienced feelings of being lost without him as well as wondering if there was something else she should have done that would have stopped the events from occurring. I think families that deal with the loss of their loved ones through terminal illness always wonder if there is something else they could be doing to stop what is happening. They probably go through some of the same feelings of anger and helplessness that Terry experienced. I also thought about the fact that Terry's loss of her husband occurred when she was in middle adulthood. She had dedicated her life to her husband and did not know who she was without him. I think people that have loved ones, especially long time spouses, that die of a terminal illness probably experience some of these same emotions. They wonder what they are supposed to do without their spouse, especially if they have been caring for them for a long time. I think that no matter how the loss of a loved one occurs, the family will be lost as to how to move on from the loss.