Oh, God!

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I’m dying!?!

This is absolutely the last straw! You’ve already given me enough pain to last me through everlasting Purgatory while living; now you want me to die in pain? Where is my control over my self? Where is my choice? I thought You gave me choices when You had me born into this life.

Now You say either I had no real choices or that what I chose wasn’t what You wanted me to choose. So I made some mistakes. I’m human, after all. You created me; You raised me. You were the One who taught me my choices! Ha! How do you like them apples? You created me and You taught me that I could choose my life as I wanted it to be.

I wanted my life to be beautiful. I wanted my life to be successful the way You taught me to be successful.

I was admired by so many people! I had a beautiful husband and beautiful children. I had beautiful homes and beautiful things. That’s what You wanted of me, wasn’t it? I was a model to everyone I met, because of what I chose.

So. I learned how to deal with the pain You gave me. I don’t understand why You gave me pain. I was only doing what You taught me.

But now you want me to die in pain?

Well, we’ll see about that!

I’m not afraid of You! Not any longer. I’ve decided to exercise my final choice. I will choose when and how I die.

I’ll die at home, my beautiful home, surrounded by my beautiful things. I’ll die with my beautiful children around me. I won’t be in pain–I’ve made sure of that. I’ve chosen a trusted person to care for me and my oldest daughter to ensure nothing is done to prolong my live. I’m going to win this one, God.

I’ll be given morphine to help me along the way. I don’t really need it, but that’s a part of my plan. Morphine is the standard for terminal cancer patients. It’s the standard for any dying patient, isn’t it? Just to help them along the way back to You?

But, for me, it meant a whole new set of circumstances–unforeseen circumstances.

My body rejected the morphine and ejected it. I was in a constant state of ‘the runs.’ My sweet children had to clean me repeatedly–

That’s such an intimate and humbling job, I hope You take some years off their time in Purgatory! I’d have appreciated it more, had they been a bit more gentle with my body, however…

Ah, well. They all made their choices.

I only have one question. If I did everything–if my children and care giver did everything–What took You so long? Why did You forsake me?

Sincerely yours,

A Soul

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…[size=124]Could you try something in the fentanyl or a fully synthetic opioid family?[/size]

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Liz,
I can only hope that your situation is not as dire as your letter to God makes it sound. I agree that none of us asked to be born; neither do we really want to die. For me, and I sense this in your statements, death is not so bad as pain. “The best we can hope for is to die in our sleep.”–Kenny Rogers

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Liz: I don’t know what to make of your post. It has been only a while since Your sister passed. Now it is you, who are ill?

I do not know you but seem a genuine and beautiful soul. I personally do not believe in death, and I have a sense of what it is but it is so mystifying and unclear, that it is very difficult to verbalize. It is most like a gut level feeling. My feeling on it is that it is a transition, and it is karmic based. Please, please relax into a feeling of whatever a higher consciousness may mean to you.

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Do not go gently into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.–Dylan Thomas

Don’t die before you have to. You have much to offer all of us.

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I’m not dying–this was not my letter to God. It’s what I imagine my sister’s thoughts were like leading up to the time she decided to die. And she did decide to die, although she already was. She wanted some measure, meager as it was, of control.

I’m not only grieving, I’m angry that my other sister and I were treated as we were by Michelle’s children. We were denied the honor of visiting her, of being present at the time of her death, of seeing her one last time after she’d found peace. Ironically, the 5 of us siblings were closer genetically than any of the children. Every generation gets a bit further away from whatever genetic ‘starting point’ is chosen. My siblings and I carry half of our parents’ genetic material. Part of the half came from our parents’ parents, and so on. Michelle’s children inherited half of their genetic material from Michelle and half from their father. In that sense, the 5 siblings were closer than are the children of the 5 siblings.

But my sister-in-law was chosen to be the primary care taker–someone from outside the family. I believe this was because my sister-in-law is a physician’s assistant. As such, she can prescribe medication. In this case, the medication was morphine. The same was true when my mother had her final stroke. Ironically, the same sister-in-law was the 'physician in charge" at the nursing home where Mom was. She got permission from Michelle (without consulting with any of the rest of us) to give Mom morphine injections every 4 hours. Mom had a “Living Will” and had lost her ability to swallow as a result of the stroke. It took Mom 4 days to die, even with the morphine.

I think that’s why Michelle chose our sister-in-law to help her die. Unfortunately, it took Michelle much longer than 4 days to accomplish her purpose. In the meantime, her closest family was kept away. Our relationship to our sister was neither recognized or honored at any time. Yet, this is a necessary part of the grieving process–we should have been there, if not at the time of her death, at least as soon as possible after her death.

We should have had the honor of helping to wash her body and to dress her in her burial clothes. And it is an honor–recognized as such be many, many cultures. It would have helped us so much in our grieving.

I don’t know what went on in my sister’s mind–she was, in many ways, a contradiction within herself. But I wrote what I thought could have been her thoughts. She believed in a Biblical God and yet she rejected Him, for example. She was willing–wanted to–have her husband back despite his being blatantly unfaithful. She only got angry with him once and started throwing dishes. He had her arrested for attempted spousal abuse! She was hand-cuffed and booked and spent the rest of the night cuffed to a bench in the police station. Yet, she wanted him back.

She was intelligent, but she seldom used her intelligence in public. She was a ‘trophy’ wife–a corporate wife–when she needed to be and she enjoyed it, but she really only wanted to be a wife.

I could go on, but I won’t. Please believe me when I say what I wrote was not about me.

Liz

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Happy to learn that it is not you doing the dying. Forgive your relatives. They do not know what they are doing. It would take more depth of feeling among them than that you have portrayed here.
I’ve debated over having a funeral for me or not. It does seem that the kinfolk & friends need a place and time of goodbye.

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