Tuesday, October 14, 2008
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.
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2 comments:
The death of a family member is difficult at any age but when the person is in their middle years, I think we have a harder time accepting it. A middle age person is at the stage in their life when they are raising children, working and progressing in their career, married or usually involved in a significant relationship. They have so much of their life left to live. Perhaps this makes it harder for them to let go and harder for their families to let them go. It’s like they are not finished and still have things left to accomplish and contribute to their families and society. When an older person passes on people make comments like they “lived a long life” or “it was their time”. But when a middle age person passes on people say that their passing is “such a loss” and “they had so much to live for”. So, I feel we can better accept death when it comes when we think it is suppose to, at the end of ones life span.
Kubler-Ross’s five stages of grief are the responses a person experiences when faced with a loss. This applies to a person with a terminal illness or to the loss of a family member. The stages (denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance) can be experienced in different order or more then once but I think a person would need to be in the state of acceptance to be able to let go.
"When to let go" such a sensitive topic. The death of a loved one is emotionally draining. Whether young or old it hards to say goodbye. I too believe it is especially harder to give up in middle adult years. During this period of life, I believe your maturity level has begun to develop. The individual is involved with their careers,families and social involvement. This makes it much harder to let go.
Your sister should remain a support person for her friend and attempt to validate her feelings as she is watching her father slip away from her life.
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