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.
Ox I have NEVER EVER owned a brand new vehicle, but I think your ideal of USED and my ideal of used are different by about ten or fifteen years…
Not too sure about that, all mine are 1999 or later except for the 1966 diesel Mercedes sedan, I’m the second owner and has only 66K original miles on it but we don’t drive that currently. None of mine have much over 100K miles except the BIG diesel truck and it is like 130K which is just broke in for a diesel engine, and it is only used to pull trailers or heavy stuff….I have one small truck and one small car and the truck we pull trailers with, are all fairly low mileage and not much more than 10 yrs old. Not valuable though, I think except for the big truck, the blue book is like $1,500-2,000 for these vehicles. Not worth selling or trading in really, “best use” of investment is to drive them till the wheels fall off. Patch’em together with “balin’war” and “duck-tape” and tie the spare on with hay twine! LOL
You can see I ain’t “car proud” but I do want one that cranks when I turn the key, tires got some tread, and all the paint’s the same color–minus a ding or two here or there. Reliability is the main thing with any vehicle, 4 tired or 4 footed!
ps Henry, I owned 2 new vehicles in my life, one a ford Escort back in the 80s and the other a Ford Ranger truck, highest price for either was $12,000.
Great article. I find myself in denial that there are real people in there somewhere in P’S much like looking for the human being taken over by aliens and those pods. Oh yeah invasion of the body snatchers. But the more you look around they are multiplying. Guns worked on those watermelon heads I believe. It is hard to defeat someone you are supposed to care for. A dillema of course.
Great Article, Ox. I like it very well thought of.
I just don’t know what to do. Everytime I bring a friend over or my little sister has to come along. Its almost like she’s constantly looking for attention from them. The minute they come towards me or chill with me, she gets mad. I’m so tired of it. She thinks she can boss people around and that she’s the queen bee. She goes around saying she’s the queen bee she will make your life a living hell. So she thinks whatever she says goes. My dad is afraid of her on the other hand. I get so sicj and tired of dealing with her. Can she have some sociopathic traits? I mean right now she’s with one of my friends from school and she won’t let her sleepover in my room. She kept trying to get her attention the whole night.
Dear Hurtnomore,
Darling, little sisters are line that sometimes. Sure she could be showing some signs of S traits, but much more likely she is just a pest wanting some attention from her big sister’s friends. You will just have to wait and see how she turns out as an adult.
As for her being a PEST—-hey, chickie, TIME is getting shorter by the day! It won’t be long until you will be away from her and not have to worry about her.
You will be moving off into the world of adulthood and she will be staying there with your father. After you leave you don’t have to worry about her messing with your friends, you can avoid her entirely if you want to.
That is the nice thing about being an adult and providing for ourselves we don’t have to put up with anyone who gives us grief, we are able to say “I don’t want to be around you” and then act on that. A child who is living under some one else’s roof doesn’t have that choice. But when you are independent you can make your own choices who you associate with and under what conditions.
Hang on, it is a matter of a few weeks now before you leave.
t
Dear OxDrover,
My parents keep pushing us to be close friends but we can’t. She has been horrible to me for years. She insists on talking behind my back with my friends constantly. She’s not little, she’s 16. I just get so tired of dealing with her,
Dear Teacher,
Denial is difficult to overcome sometimes….it was for me at least. We seem to think it will keep us from feeling the pain of the reality, but it really doesn’t, doesn’t even delay the pain much….wish it did. It basically just keeps us from DOING anything to fix the problem. So we have to give it up before we can concentrate on fixing what can be fixed, which is mostly ourselves. We can’t fix the Ps…all the CPR and advanced life support in the world won’t revive the dead, just slow down the putrification of the corpse.
Dear Hurtnomore,
Your parents might wish that you would be close friends and if you aren’t then you aren’t. When you are little or living under some one else’s roof, they can have some influence over how you act, but NO one can make you love someone you don’t care for. They can insist as long as you stay under their roof that you behave toward her in a certain way, but once you are out from under their roof and are an adult, YOU have the choice who you associate with.
Along with autonomy (being your own boss) comes the RESPONSIBILITY for making your own living, paying your own way, and making your own decisions. When someone else supports you they can make rules that you must abide even though you may not think they are fair or good, but as long as they are paying your way, you must abide by their rules.
You will be 18 soon, and you are not required by law to abide by anyone else’s rules—as long as they are not providing for you. If you come to stay in my house, and I provide your food, clothing, etc. then I will make the rules you must abide while you live in MY house. If you don’t like them, or don’t want to do them, then you are welcome to leave living under my roof.
That’s the situation you are in with your parents, as a dependent young person (I won’t say “child”) but as long as they pay the bills for your living space, for the majority of your living expenses etc. this gives them some “rights” on how you BEHAVE. Even if you think it is NOT fair, and it may not BE fair. But the choices are put up with their rules, or provide your own place to live and own living expenses.
Sure it makes you unhappy to have a younger sister being a pest, and at 16 she SHOULD not behave that way, but you know what, YOU HAVE NO CONTROL over her. I have no control over ANYone…except that I can tell them to get out of my life, because I pay my own way as an adult. I am not forced by circumstances of living to put up with someone who is a pest in the place I live. Unfortunately, until you leave home you are forced to put up with how she behaves.
None of us have control over others, we can only control ourselves and how we react to others. I would just not bring friends home knowing she will act like this, or warn your friends she is a pest. It isn’t long until you leave for college, and once you are away from living at home, you won’t have her breathing down your neck all the time. You will have more freedom along with more responsibility. It isn’t long until you will be leaving. Keep reminding yourself of that. (((Hugs))))
This is kinda off topic, but have any of you wondered what it would be like, if we had the science to predict whether or not someone would be born with a disorder – like anti-social personality disorder.
How would you handle that? After all of the pain that you’ve gone through. I mean, maybe one day it will be as easy to screen for ASPD as it is for Down’s Syndrome. I know this is a heated topic anyways, but it was on my mind, so please forgive me for raising eyebrows.
I’ve had to square off with this “disease”, because it’s profoundly affected my life. I’m tougher now. In a deep way. And, there’s no way I’ll fully ever forget the impact it’s had on me. There’s no running away from it. It’s torn away every false belief I’ve ever had about the way the world and humanity.
I hope that my son does not have ASPD, but I have no control over the “genetic” hardwiring. All I can do is be the best mother I can be. If he does have it, I know that I’ll have to make my peace, like Ox, and give it to God. Surrender the relationship, if it becomes a toxic, black void.
Recently, my daughter was asking be about good vs. bad, and who goes to heaven. Basically, we got around to the conversation that, while I would hope she’d choose the faith I have, I can’t make her choose it – nor can I make her choose to do anything based in empathy and concern. She has to make those choices herself. I told her I will always love her, but I wouldn’t want to be around her if she broke laws and became a “bad” person.
Her response kinda stunned me, because she quickly recognized the simple logic of my answers to her, and happily went along her way (this is a child that is never satisfied with simple answers). But, I think she could recognize some important truth.
I can’t make the people I love, walk the path I want to walk, respect the boundaries I respect, regard the truths that I regard, but I will always have control over myself.
I’ve lost a lot illusions about “love”, seeing the breakdown of many relationships, now. For me, I’ve lost a few personal relationships that needed to be cut off, because they were with toxic people. My mother (with whom I have very limited and structured contact) and my ex-socio (who is completely cut off), namely. And, it seems traumatic and unfortunate, in some ways I feel worn down and jaded, but I learned one really important rule from the socio – and that’s love can’t and won’t thrive in a toxic relationship, ever. Also, that “love” never really existed in those relationships, to begin with, except for the feelings and things I was infusing into them.
I’ve also learned that you can’t keep yourself tied to a toxic relationship, unless you want to go down with that ship, so to speak.
I don’t mean to go all “Bible” on everyone, but this subject makes me think a lot about how God calls us to love him above all else and everyone else. I think there’s an important reason for that. One, being that our human relationships are flawed because human nature is fundamentally flawed, but God is not. He doesn’t abandon or change.
Anyways. That’s what this post got me thinking about. Good post Oxy! “Just Like His Father” is at the post office waiting for pickup 🙂