By Ox Drover
A thought struck me the other day as I was musing ”¦ many people today have at least thought about how they want things to proceed when they come toward the end of their lives. Do they want to be “kept on life support” with feeding tubes and ventilators and lying unconscious in an intensive care nursing unit?
Is that kind of “life” really anything but prolonging drying? Or, is it possible that if you stayed there with mechanical life support, that you might actually wake up and heal, and go on and enjoy more time in a healthy life? Many of us have made decisions which we have placed into “Living Wills” and have appointed someone to be our decision maker if we can’t make our own decision at the time. (BTW if you don’t have a living will which is legally valid, your nearest relative or your spouse will be automatically appointed.)
When the time came to make the decision about providing life support for my husband with the terrible burns he had, between the medical knowledge I had about his chances of survival (zero) and his wishes, there was no decision to make, nothing could have helped him live longer, only prolong the unavoidable.
In my career as a registered nurse practitioner I have watched families vacillate over whether to put their loved one on mechanical life support, to take them off, or put in a feeding tube or to take one out. I have seen them cry and fight and have seen childhood jealousies come to the front to make decisions which should have been made by a cooler head.
Life support and psychopaths
As I was musing about these physical end of life life-supports, I thought about the fact that sometimes in my relationships I’ve done the same thing. I’ve kept a relationship that was essentially “brain dead and suffering” on life support, loath to let it die a natural and peaceful death by just not sustaining it artificially any more. Hoping against hope that it might improve if I just gave it enough time and energy. Later realizing that I had expended a tremendous amount of energy sustaining this relationship which only became sicker and sicker, sucked away resources I could have used for other more positive things.
Looking back, hindsight is always 20/20, I can see that I kept my relationship with my psychopathic son on life-support from the time he was 17, and when I went to the local jail to get him, as he walked up to me and my husband he said, “What the f&%k took you so long?” At that time, I said to the jailer, “Sir, there’s a problem, this isn’t my son, because my son wouldn’t talk to me like that, take this young man back upstairs.” Right then I had seen the relationship was dead, there was no mutuality about it, there was no respect for me, or for my position as his mother.
But I couldn’t conceive that my relationship with my son couldn’t be somehow miraculously saved by some magical miracle so that “everything would be all right.”
So because I couldn’t stand the thought or the pain of pulling the rest of the life support for the relationship, I put it back on life support and kept it there for decades after that. Even when it took turns for the worse and he wound up not just in juvy jail, but it big-boy’s prison for a felony robbery, then back again for murder.
I kept on refusing to let myself disconnect from the corpse of our relationship, refused to let it die a natural death , and feel the grief. In my prolonged denial of how seriously flawed our relationship was, I tortured myself with hope. Hope that was unfounded on reality, malignant hope that my son might survive inside this corpse of a soul.
Had to pull the plug
Eventually there came a time when I realized that the relationship was not repairable. I could not, medicine could not, nothing could fix the relationship, and in addition the relationship on life support was poisoning everything about itself—including me. It was requiring all the energy I had to keep it as the living dead. It was a source of contagion that used my energy, infected other relationships around it and me. I had to pull the plug and let it go, in order to survive.
I actually had a memorial service for the boy that was, the little boy I had grown to love so much, oh gosh was he cute, but he’s no longer living, and my relationship with him is only in my memory. Just as my late husband and I are only in my memory. Yet, by letting both of them go, and doing the appropriate and painful grieving, I have released those good memories to be enjoyed and loved the rest of my life.
Nothing should outlast its time. When something is dead or broken and can’t be fixed, it is time for us to let it go. Cherish the memories if we can, but let the rest of it go.
This story about life support really resonated with me. I can’t imagine the courage it took to let her husband go. After finding out that Oxdrover’s son was not making the right choices, how hard it had to have been to let him go too. You can’t save someone who has no desire to be saved and will not show remorse for all the pain they have caused.
It’s this malignant hope that we keep alive, if only this person that we have loved so deeply could see the pain they cause, if only they know that I will help them through and care for them. The fact is that they don’t care about us and keeping them hooked up to an IV isn’t going to cause any miracles to happen. That has probably been the hardest lesson for me, no amount of love, care, understanding, forgiveness or empathy will get them to come back from the dead.
Whatever part of their brain that is shut off (cerebral cortex?) from putting the brakes on their bad behavior, it’s a goner. Nothing will bring it back.
Daughter has said that I am all emotion and dad is all logic, she is a little of both. Too bad he can only fake emotion and can’t feel the wonderful spectrum of emotions that make us human, I can only feel sorry for him and get him out of my life for good.
Oxy you have many times smacked me in the head with your analogies, wit & wisdom… I know you are passionate in your wisdom and personal experiences and you are so very valued & appreciated by many. You are almost the first to welcome all everytime, and make sense of the madness! Thank you x
HopeforJoy, I hope you can pull that plug and break free. Actually, stopping the life support for my husband was not difficult at all, he had third degree burns over 95% of his body and there was NO chance he could have lived, he knew it and I knew it, there was no “decision” to make. If he had had 20% burns, then I would have had a decision to make, there might have been a “chance” he might have lived (but at 72 not likely) so I would have had to DECIDE.
The relationship with the P-son really was just as surely “dead” but still breathing as my husband was physically. There should not have been any “malignant false hope” for the relationship with my son, yet, I allowed myself to see “hope” because it was too painful to face facts with my relationship with my son. I wanted to DELAY facing facts, and if I kept up that “hope” it delayed me having to FEEL the grief of the death of the relationship with my son.
When we keep up that “little bit of hope” (when in reality we KNOW the truth but fail to face it) we are we THINK, protecting ourselves from having to FEEL those painful feelings, but in actual fact, we are4 making them worse and prolonging them. It is like trying to be “kind” to a puppy by cutting his tail off one inch at a time instead of snipping it off once and being done with it.
One hurt and over. Instead we prolong it with hurting over and over and over and anxiety and pain.
The coward dies a 1000 deaths, the brave man but one.
Can’t remember who said that, but it is so true with the realtionships with the psychopaths too. we need to be brave and break it off, instead of prolonging the agony.
Thanks, Oxy for your great article. I’ve been trying to put the pieces of your story together from the comments on the other articles, and this one helps a lot. I am so sorry about what happened to your husband.
Thank you also for your time and effort to help those of us who are new (and not so new) to this and struggling to cope with the confusion and pain. Your rational approach to some of the emotional garbage has helped me tremendously.
I can relate to your feelings about your son when picking him up from prison. My brother was addicted to cocaine years ago, and he actually OD’d on it. Long story short, he swallowed a bag in the back of the police car and it ruptured. He nearly died, and they moved him to a recovery center after he got out of the hospital.
My mom and I went to see him the next day, and he was not happy to see us. He acted like he didn’t want to see us, and couldn’t wait to get rid of us. I walked out and told my mom that he was not my brother. That really hurt. He is clean and doing great now.
The relationship of a mother to her children is the strongest bond there is. I am sorry that you have had to go through that separation as well. I know that you are loved by many people, and may God Bless You and Keep You.
Thanks for the article Ox!
I’ve been “chewing” on it all day today. I began to look at my life with hspath and just my life in general. I realized that I fill my life up with the malignant hope for a lot of things in my life. I then realized that the malignant hope is really a shroud for the profound fear that I have in my life. I tend to hold on to things beyond their use. For instance, I have a 16 year old car, for one reason or another won’t keep the battery charged. So at the time this happened, I purchased a portable battery jumper. Every time I want to start the car, I have to jump start it. How pathetically sad, when I think about it!!! I did the same thing with a cell phone, it was hanging by threads and in two pieces and I still hung on to it. What’s really troubling is that IT WASN’T THAT I COULD AFFORD TO DO BETTER. I COULD! I was fearful of what the newness would bring. Because at least with the old stuff, I knew how it worked. Same with relationship with hspath. Although I didn’t stay long after his true colors emerged, the fact remains that I still stayed. I ignored the clear signs that there was no relationship to revive or hold on to. I feared being wrong in making a choice even though it was clear that it was in my best interests.
I’m learning to trust myself more and ridding myself of the fear. Finally got a new cell phone. Am looking for a new car. Working each day to build a new me.
healingfast – maybe you need a new battery for your car?
Dear Healingfast,
Yes, fear of change—-also fear of spending money on yourself maybe too? I am the world’s worst about feeling bad or guilty about spending my money that I earned on ME. I recenlty spent $4200 bucks on some hearing aids for me. I am profoundly deaf and have been for years (I’m great at lip reading) but felt guilty about spending the money (and truly I don’t have an unlimited amount by any means) but then I thought, if it had been my son D that needed the hearing aids, I would have gladly popped for them, and not questioned the purchase for a moment, but for MYSELF? I had to think about it really hard and finally decided I would do something for ME and am still fighting the guilty feeling or the “did I do right to spend that much?” or “what happens if I really desperately need that money later?” feelings.
I inherited my grandparents’ financial insecurity from them having lived hand to mouth during the depression (which here in the South lasted untiil the mid-1960s.) so there is a voice in the back of my head that says “save save, for tomorrow we may starve”
I had a dog one time that had that mind set. Picked her up, starving on the side of the road, pitiful starvation, and she would eat and eat and eat no matter how much she was full because she just “knew” that tomorrow the food would run out.
I guess I have that same attitude about spending on MYSELF, but not about spending on others. Remember, we must TAKE CARE OF EVERYONE ELSE and we can do without, or make do, or whatever, but it’s okay to spend on others, even for their recreation, when we need medicine…but it isn’t okay to spend money on ourselves.
This having been a LIFE LONG feeling of mine, I can actually remember feeling bad/guilty when my parents had to take me to the doctor because I got sick as a young child (no medical insurance in those days) it has been difficult to combat, much less get “over” these feelings by using rational thought and logic, because it is a FEELING not logic.
I TELL myself it is OK to take care of me, to spend money on me, but I still have to make myself do it. I don’t mind being THRIFTY, because that is OK but being thrifty means that you have ALL of what you need and some of what you want at the least possible amount of expense. I actually enjoy price shopping for things and getting bargains. It is actually kind of a fun game for me. I live in a nice home that only cost about 1/4 of what it would have cost to buy such a place, (lots of sweat equity) have everything I need for health and entertainment, and on a poverty level cash income I live like I make $100K a year. (don’t owe anything and have zero debt) But it does mean I have to watch my cash flow outgo, prioritize and bargain hunt for the things I want. Some things though aren’t cheap, and hearing aids are one of those things….medical care too. I’m not going to shop for the LOWEST BIDDER on my appendectomy or a do-it-yourself-kit! LOL (razor blade and a band aid) LOL
All I can attribute all this to is that I was programmed to take care of others at the expense of my own needs—and I did it for most of my life. That’s not a good way to be, and no one MADE me that way, because I must accept responsibility for ACCEPTING that training with out any resistence. Even after I got old enough to question its rightness, I didn’t.
Now I see it, now I KNOW IT, but it is difficult to CHANGE the feelings….I can change the behaviors and take care of ME, but the feelings about it I just have to accept that part of me wants to feel guilty, and then tell THAT PART to shut up! LOL
BTW: Have you thought about checking the battery? If that’s okay, check the ALTERNATOR, it might not be putting out enough voltage. Or your cables between the two might need changing. I drive older model vehicles (another economy) but we keep them tuned up and running well. I couldn’t do that if son D wasn’t a pretty good mechanic, but as long as he is here to help me, we can get by with the older vehicles and save money on them, but without someone to work on them (and always keeping a spare) wouldn’t be possible or save me much if any money, so I’d have to get a newer vehicle.
Ok, Hens and Ox, I will try the battery and then the alternator and cables.
I, like you, Ox love to bargain shop. I like the idea of biggest bang for the buck too! I love going to pre-owned stores and finding gems. I’m slowly learning to let go of accepting the worst out of fear and procrastination.
You are so right, if it would have been someone else, I would have sprang into action immediately. I’m going to try to love myself that way, then I will truly be able to really give love.
Thanks for your continued wisdom!! I absolutely love it!!
But of course a bad battery is always a good excuse to buy a new car ~!
Dear Hens & healing,
Henry! Maybe for you, sweet cheeks, but I don’t get a new “used car” till the parts needed to fix it cost more than the blue book value! I drive them til the wheels fall off. I actually save a lot of money that way, as I only carry liability insurance on them, so if I crash them, I don’t get any money, but if it is my fault, then I am covered for the damage to someone else.
With older cars, the price of the insurance stays the same or higher to fix your own, but the amount they pay you goes down every year anyway as the value of the car decreases. So by driving POS’s I save close to $1000 a year on insurance per vehicle. (I have 3) and my self-insurance doesn’t cost much as the value the insurance would pay with a reasonable deductible would only be about $1500-2000 any way. So if I go 2 years in each vehicle without a total crash I’m money ahead, even if I were to total it and, knock wood, haven’t had even a fender bender in 6 years, and that was hitting a fence post with the side of my truck chasing cows in the pasture. LOL Kind of embarasing that one–so usually lie about what happened if someone says “what happened to the side of your farm truck?” LOL But then Son D, God bless his soul, says “Nah, that’s not what happened, she’s lying, let me tell you what really happened.” Or should that be God REST his soul!? LOL