I Know How I’d Like to Die. Do You?

On the passing of two old ladies who lived until the end and died as they lived — and what they taught me to hope for.

None of us knows our end. Is it morbid or depressing to imagine your last days? I think not. It will happen. Death is more dependable than taxes. And we don’t get to choose or even preview how it will visit us.

Still, it can’t hurt to visualize what you’d like to happen. As a friend recently said of estate planning: “You plan for what you’d like and then you deal with what happens.”

If I had a choice, I’d — not surprisingly — prefer a “good” death. No suffering. Loved ones visiting. Eating. A little TV. Books, if my eyes and attention span can manage them. A gradual weakening until the letting go.

I might not die this way, but I can hope, can’t I? I can put it out there.

In the last few months, I’ve had good role models: Marge, who passed last June and whose memorial I attended in late September, and Reba, who left this earthly plane yesterday at age 94.

Being There

Marge

Marge made it until 104 1/4. (Zelda, who almost made it to 105, told me you get to add fractions over 100!)

Marge’s end began, as is often the case with the old-old, when she fell in the bathroom. A month after a successful hip replacement surgery and a short stint in rehab, she came home to round-the-clock care. She was back in the apartment she loved — except she was living her worst fear.

Several years earlier, following bypass surgery, it took only three weeks for Marge to regain her strength — and dismiss the live-in aide. “She just sits there and looks at me.” A broken hip, she knew, would take longer. Worse, she might never regain her independence.

A little more than two weeks later, on a Wednesday afternoon, Marge said good bye to Sati, the kind-hearted woman who helped her out three days a week. Sati, who adored her, sensed it might be their last hug. Marge whispered that she didn’t like aides staring at her. She seemed tired of fighting. She died a day later, present to the end.

Reba

Reba is my son-in-law Peter’s mother — my daughter Jen’s mother-in-law —which makes her my machatunim. (Apparently, only Ashkanazi Jews have a word for a married child’s in-laws. Not to be confused with mishpachah, which refers to the whole family.)

Reba’s and my visits over the last 20+ years have been limited to holidays and milestone occasions. But I always enjoyed seeing her. She was smart and soft-spoken. I marveled at her calm. Reba was easy to like.

I also admired her practicality; she was a realist. She gave up her car keys willingly. And after her husband died, she knew it was time to move out of their house and meet new people.

Reba is the good “stock” from which my daughter’s husband was ladled. Peter, Reba’s youngest, has been a devoted, caring son. And as young women are often told, if you want a preview of how a guy will treat you, watch him with his mother.

Like Marge, Reba knew when she’d had enough. She asked Peter whether Jen—the newly-minted hospice nurse whom she adored — was okay with her decision. To me, that was the most generous and kindest good-bye gift Reba could have left Jen: her undying respect.

Death, Dying, and My Old Ladies

Reba had fifteen years on me. As with all my much-older acquaintances, I paid attention as she navigated territory I’d yet to reach.

I think of Reba as “my old lady” the way a guy might refer to the little woman at home who loves and takes care of him. My old ladies live in my head and heart. Some are still alive; some have passed. I keep learning from all of them.

No doubt, my old ladies who’ve had “good” deaths are lucky. Their minds were intact. They had resources to sustain them and good people to support them. If they had a rough time, it was at least short-lived. But they also helped luck along by moving their bodies, keeping their brains active, filling their days with interesting people and projects. They took nothing for granted.

Marge and Reba were conscious, competent, and courageous, which is a good way to go through life and to end it. Their recent passing is a poignent reminder:

The qualities that sustain us throughout life, also give us grace in the end.

We die as we live. We can only hope our luck holds out.

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