Dealing with death...
Aug. 28th, 2008 10:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
moominmuppetMorph's condition has been hitting Mark really, really hard, and it's gotten me thinking about how I cope with death, especially since I'm feeling pretty calm and at peace about things with Morph.
When I was very young, before I was in school full time, and then during the summers, my Dad would take me with him each week to the nursing homes where he did services and visits. I used to say that "when I was under 8, most of my friends were over 80." It introduced me to death of people I care about very early on. We've also had huge numbers of pets my entire life (at one point the household briefly got a high as 49 animals, and none of those were fish), so death of beloved pets has also been part and parcel of life for me. Regrets and stress, for me, come from situations where there are what ifs, and coulda/shoulda/wouldas. With younger animals and people, there's often more reason for those kinds of regrets, and for the loss of the rest of what lifespan they might've had. With the elderly, it's not an "if" for me, it's a "when", and I'm much more aware of that, so what ends up mattering most to me is whether they have a good end of life and a good death, as opposed to ekeing out extra days at the cost of those things. Intervention that maintains quality of life (like Shroom's thyroid meds, which she doesn't mind taking, and which keep her healthy and have a large payout in terms of additional lifespan) make a great deal of sense to me, and I'm happy to do those. Interventions that cause more misery than they gain time/pleasure just don't make sense to me.
With Morph I'm not feeling regrets; I know he's had a good, long life with me that wouldn't likely have happened otherwise, I know he gets loving and treats constantly, and I know I'll miss him when he's gone, but I will have been glad to have him in my life for 15 or more years.
Similar to my Grandmother, who had quite a life, and who died how she'd wanted (without a decline in a hospital or nursing home) -- I still think of her often, but I don't get overwhelmingly sad very frequently at all, nor have I since that immediate day that I found out.
And all in all, it's really true that I deal much better with death than with suffering; always have. The points where I really struggle badly are in trying to find the right point, when I have to make an active decision about that.
When I was very young, before I was in school full time, and then during the summers, my Dad would take me with him each week to the nursing homes where he did services and visits. I used to say that "when I was under 8, most of my friends were over 80." It introduced me to death of people I care about very early on. We've also had huge numbers of pets my entire life (at one point the household briefly got a high as 49 animals, and none of those were fish), so death of beloved pets has also been part and parcel of life for me. Regrets and stress, for me, come from situations where there are what ifs, and coulda/shoulda/wouldas. With younger animals and people, there's often more reason for those kinds of regrets, and for the loss of the rest of what lifespan they might've had. With the elderly, it's not an "if" for me, it's a "when", and I'm much more aware of that, so what ends up mattering most to me is whether they have a good end of life and a good death, as opposed to ekeing out extra days at the cost of those things. Intervention that maintains quality of life (like Shroom's thyroid meds, which she doesn't mind taking, and which keep her healthy and have a large payout in terms of additional lifespan) make a great deal of sense to me, and I'm happy to do those. Interventions that cause more misery than they gain time/pleasure just don't make sense to me.
With Morph I'm not feeling regrets; I know he's had a good, long life with me that wouldn't likely have happened otherwise, I know he gets loving and treats constantly, and I know I'll miss him when he's gone, but I will have been glad to have him in my life for 15 or more years.
Similar to my Grandmother, who had quite a life, and who died how she'd wanted (without a decline in a hospital or nursing home) -- I still think of her often, but I don't get overwhelmingly sad very frequently at all, nor have I since that immediate day that I found out.
And all in all, it's really true that I deal much better with death than with suffering; always have. The points where I really struggle badly are in trying to find the right point, when I have to make an active decision about that.
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no subject
Date: 2008-08-28 03:13 pm (UTC)I totally agree with you.
These decisions are never easy to make, but it looks like you've thought very thoroughly about it.
Have the other animals reacted differently towards him recently due to his health?
no subject
Date: 2008-09-15 07:51 pm (UTC)Not that I've seen so far; the other cats still try to push him around, and Leroy still tries to hump him. *eyeroll*