Soul Mosaic

Death – the alternate reality

“Lorazepam.”

That word rattled my brain and took me right back to my Mom’s death in 2021.

I tried to snap back into the present moment, as I was in the middle of a visit with a dying friend. She apologized for her mental fog.

“I hate the meds…they make me so fuzzy…but it helps. Something with an L…”

A family member sitting nearby said, “Lorazepam,” and explained it helped calm my friend’s agitation.

I remembered the drug, and knew the emotional place they were in — the concern about: “Should you give it?” …”How much?”…”How often?”…”Is it too soon?”… “Am I causing harm?” 

There’s no question that modern hospice practices are a blessing for the dying and their family. But the dying process itself has its own struggles. After a lifetime of always focusing on healing someone, now you have to wrap your head around helping them die. We spend our lives encouraging our sick family members to eat, take vitamins, and see the doctor. Then at the end, you have to do a rapid reversal and stop giving food, ease off liquids, and stifle every impulse to offer a medical intervention. It’s the right thing to do, but it goes against every instinct we’ve been trained to follow, and it’s even harder if you’ve spent your life as a medical professional trying to heal people.

As I walked back to my car, the word Lorazepam pounded in my brain. Yes. That was the first hospice medication I had to administer to my Mother as she was dying.

It all came back as if it were yesterday. Mom’s discomfort. The meds. Her prayer in her semi-conscious state:

“Help me, Mother Angelica…”

***

Can you hold the pain from a lifetime of emotional distance and hurt, along with your empathy and love for that person, and care for them as they die?

The shit-show

Maybe it was in keeping with the hand that life dealt my Mother that her death process was doomed to be difficult. In terms of getting much assistance from her local hospice, it was a shit-show from the start, even though it wasn’t their fault.