Meeting Death<\/b><\/h2>\n

It was a seemingly endless summer the year that I met death the first time. \u00a0Any stay-at-home parent with a young child has known the unique combination of lengthy days spent repeatedly feeding, holding, and changing that child and the feeling of time speeding by as clothes are outgrown overnight and new things are experienced at lightning speed. \u00a0Yes, the growing up period, the learning to live period, can make time seem to stand still. \u00a0So can the slowing down period, the learning to die period. \u00a0And my small family was experiencing both that year.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

During the summer of 2000, I was dying \u2013 not dying some eventual day, in the way that each living being always is; my physical body was in the process of dying. \u00a0Initially diagnosed with Pulmonary Veno-Occlusive Disease, secondary to Fibrosing Mediastinitis, I found myself in a hospital bed in Rochester, Minnesota\u2019s Mayo Clinic. \u00a0My heart and lungs were, quite simply, very quickly losing their functionality as the entire middle of my torso was becoming calcified. My physicians back home had exhausted their options for my care; not knowing what to do with me, they sent me to Mayo in hopes of a miracle. <\/span><\/p>\n

It was not only my physicians at home who did not know what to do with me during that time. \u00a0<\/span>I<\/span><\/i> certainly did not know what to do with me. \u00a0I spent hours sitting on my couch, nursing my one-year-old son and wondering what would be, wondering just how in the world I could manage this process of dying.<\/span><\/p>\n

I had no teachers, no gurus to help guide me through this new realm in which I found myself. \u00a0My experiences with death had been minimal and all very similar: \u00a0A childhood friend who died one night from meningitis after playing with my brother and me all day. \u00a0A high school superstar who fell asleep at the wheel of his car and left his peers in shock and confusion. \u00a0My beloved grandfather, who kept his illness a secret so that no one in our family would feel the need to care for him during his final days. \u00a0And, most recently, an uncle-in-law whose heart attack at a surprisingly young age devastated our entire extended family. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Each of these people had left my life quickly. \u00a0Their deaths did not feel at all similar to the process I found myself in that year. \u00a0From my vantage point, they were here, fully alive and filled with life, one moment, and then they were gone. \u00a0I did not watch as their bodies deteriorated. \u00a0I did not witness them releasing attachments to these beautiful lives they had created.<\/span><\/p>\n

The only guidance I had received related to navigating terminal illness had come from the world of entertainment and the media. \u00a0Television programs dramatized the dying process. \u00a0Movies portrayed loving, peaceful deathbed good-byes. \u00a0Novels detailed dramatic family reunions just before the moment of death. \u00a0And countless news stories revealed intimate details concerning the deaths of people I would never know. <\/span><\/p>\n

But how was I actually <\/span>to do<\/span><\/i> this? \u00a0How to leave behind everything I had known? \u00a0How to say goodbye to my son, who would never remember me? \u00a0How to leave my husband alone to raise him? \u00a0How to release this body, this mind, this being \u2013 this life? \u00a0And the most confounding question of all, the one that seems to trip up our incessantly active minds no matter what angle we approach it from: \u00a0how to use this <\/span>me<\/span><\/i> to come to some understanding of and acceptance of the end of <\/span>this me<\/span><\/i>? \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

While my son was learning to walk and talk and taking in much of the exciting world around him for the first time, I was learning to be sick and die and taking in the breathtakingly beautiful world around me, knowing that I had a limited number of days through which to do this.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Meeting Death It was a seemingly endless summer the year that I met death the first time. \u00a0Any stay-at-home parent with a young child has known the unique combination of lengthy days spent repeatedly feeding, holding, and changing that child and the feeling of time speeding by as clothes are outgrown overnight and new things are experienced at lightning speed. \u00a0Yes, the growing up period, the learning to live period, can make time seem to stand still. \u00a0So can the slowing down period, the learning to die period. \u00a0And my small family was experiencing both that year. During the summer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","filesize_raw":"","footnotes":""},"yoast_head":"\n