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.
one_step_at_a_time,
Thanks for your post. My therapist told me during one of our sessions that I had been slammed with a lot. I get tired of being brave (not always feeling this way), wondering what’s around the corner, dreading it, having a hard time being hopeful, peaceful. I am plugging along, trying to figure out my next step, hoping that it leads to better days. I know that I have had experiences that foretold my future, remembering words that others (different people saying something that stuck in my mind) spoke to me (years ago), discovering that they predicted my present situation. So, I’m thinking that God is in control, not liking many of my experiences, but keep moving. I could have cracked up more than once (having had a few min-breakdowns due to stressful experiences), but I know that I won’t allow my situation to cause me to have a complete meltdown. For some reason, I feel that I am mentally strong, withstanding tremendous pressure already. I’ve had the PTSD symptoms -all I want is for the universe to stop bothering with me, letting me have a break for the rest of my life. I’ve learned about sociopathy (never really wanting to have known about this disorder in the first place). I know that I have to take care of myself, attempting to do so. I am considering turning back to God, taking it step-by-step, wanting to know Him as He truly is, definitely protecting myself from any more trauma. I hear what you say about karma (different laws that are played out in the universe just because that’s the way it is), giving certainty to us. Basically, we reap what we sow, even reaping things not sown by ourselves, good and bad, positive and negative. I will think about your post too. Take care.
Dear Buttons,
I used “rapid eye movement” therapy to work on the PTSD of the plane crash. I also realized that I had had PTSD from prior traumas in my life….didn’t know what it was, but I sure had the symptoms and even after decades of pushing it down, it REVIVED with the plane crash.
Actually, I can still “see” the crash in my mind, but the EMOTIONS that went with it that day are not there any more. The fear etc.
Actually, my husband had been flying planes since he was 12, and if he had lost his “medical” and been unable to fly he would have “died” while he still lived. He really did NOT suffer as his burns were so deep that the nerve endings were burned and he was conscious and oriented and we got to say our good byes.
I think my step son said it best when he said at the memorial service. “Cancer? heart attack? Stroke?…..airplane crash? What would dad have wanted if he had had the choice?”
There is NO doubt in my mind that he would have chosen the aircraft crash hands down.
One of his pilot friends sent me the following statement.
“There are only two bad things that can happen to a pilot. First is he goes out to the plane knowing it will be his last flight. Second is he goes out to the plane NOT knowing it will be his last flight.”
I think of the two, my husband would have chosen the last event. He was a one-of-a-kind guy, and I always told him that I was the only woman west of the Atlantic that would have had him, and he would reply, that he was the only man east of the Pacific that would have me, and WE WERE BOTH RIGHT! LOL
We had a great ride and though I miss him, I no longer grieve, and I can smile at the funny things we did, and laugh at the not so funny things we did.
Blessings to you Button!
This is a great post OxD, We definitely share some similarities with the widowhood and spath sons. My 16 year old who sits in adult jail with 6-7 current felonies just took a plea agreement. I legally terminated my parental rights to him about 3 years ago, when it was clear it was not safe for him to return home after a year long stint in a residential treatment center. He had attempted a sexual assault on one of my step daughters as a way to get my new husband and kids to move away. He actually verbalized that. Anyway…your post resonates with me …although I did terminate my legal parental rights, in my heart he is still my son. I still visit him in jail, put money in his commissary, because there is no one else to do so for him. He was a victim of abuse/neglect and we adopted him at age 5. When I had to terminate my rights to him in order to keep the other kids safe it felt like I was abandoning him all over again. It is such a complex relationship, and I know in my heart that I need someday to “pull the plug”, yet my mommy guilt needs for me to somehow support him until he is an adult because he literally has no one else…of course, I’m pretty sure he needs no one else. I think I care for him out of my need to care for him…not his….which has a certain pathology in itself.
He will be out of jail probably in October and since he is officially a legal “ward of the state” and in foster care will end up in an independent living program until he “ages out” of the system in a few short years. The plan is for him to have a strict probation of 4-5 years, and even the most minor violation will send him directly to prison, not jail, prison. I know in my heart there is no way he can maintain this for that length of time.
Is this foolhardy for me to try and stand by him, in what little way that I can until he is “officially” meaning 18-21 out on his own? That is when I know I will need to likely emotionally back out. Of course I hold that magic “hope” that somewhere in there he may grow up and realize his potential- there’s that life support piece. My support for him now is mainly emotional, save the little bit I put into his Commisary account every few weeks. I feel like if I completely abandon him, I am no better than his abusive birth parents. Terminating my parental rights to him was the hardest thing I have gone through, even harder than my husband suddenly dying in a car crash. I faced a lot of judgment from folks for doing that and only my closest friends knew what a living hell it was at times to parent him. I am the only one who has gone to visit him in the 7 months he has been in jail (breaking and enterings/theft stuff he did when he ran away from his foster home)
Oxy I admire your ability to stand by your guns (literally) in relation to your P son. You have faced something SO head on, locked horns with evil that is sooo close up and personal it’s astounding. Thinking of you as I potter around the place cleaning and shopping…thinking Oxy is some woman for one woman…it’s inspiring and your character is now introjected inside my heart as an example of endurance, humour and love despite it all. blessingsxx
Oxy, I agree with Buttons, your one amazing lady and an inspiration to us all,I think of you most days.I can so relate to this new article, re letting go, of your dying husband, and secondly letting go of your spath son , the Murderer. You are so strong, but life has not hardened or embittered you. Like you, I HUNG ON for so many years , refusing to finally accept that both my ex husband and both my daughters are spaths. I gave and gave and gave, ran myself ragged, made myself broke,turned myself inside out in the mistaken belief that “somehow,” by a miracle, they change, become sweet and loving,that eventually all my love would be worth it, Id somehow unlock the REAL person inside them, and theyd love me back.Well, 30 years have passed, the spath Ds are 44 and 46, and NO they havent changed,I have to accept they DONT love me, have NEVER loved me,{well, maybe they did as small children.]Aint gonna happen.I have to finally accept they dont give a big rats behind about me.This Im finding the hardest, that NC means FOREVER. For my own survival, emotional ,mental, and ,yes, financial.I even hid from my present husband that Id borrowed A$7,000 from the bank to bale spath D. out yet again 2 years ago.I wont be doing that ever again.She is a user, they both are.Its so hard to get my head arounf the fact I gave birth to two utter biatches.Your so right again, “The truth will set you fre, but first it will pith you off!”Much Love, Mama Gem.XXX
Dear Roodyzoo,
I definitely get your pain, and the guilt and the feeling that you can’t “abandon him.” The thing is that “he” is already “dead”—that little five year old boy is GONE, and his organs have been donated to some young man that YOU DO NOT KNOW and he is TOXIC.
This young man came from an abusive background, but probably, very likely, was also genetically predisposed to be a psychopath in any case, and with the early abuse + the genetic he has ‘blossomed” into a soul-eating flower that you cannot rescue or fix.
I know that my P son has no one else (or didn’t until my egg donor) started to RESCUE him from me after I “abandoned him.” But my son EARNED his cell in prison by blowing the brains out of a young woman because she pithed him off, and it is only by the grace of God it wasn’t ME he killed, so I actually have some “survivor’s guilt” about her…I am glad it was her he killed and not me, and I feel guilty about that. Better her than me. That’s the truth of the matter…but I can’t change the fact I am GLAD I am alive. I AM sorry she is dead, but I am damned GLAD I am alive. I feel for her parents, and her family, and for me and my family, and the only thing I can do is to try to keep him in prison.
YOU are the one who has to make the decision to cut off financial and emotional and visiting support or when you know you need to do this. You cannot rescue or fix him, he has no love or appreciation for you, he is using you like a parasite at this point and at some point you need to decide when you have donated enough blood that you are starting to suffer and stop the donations.
I literally had to decide my son “died” at about 12 years of age and I threw away all the photos of him after that, I had a private memorial service for my “dead” son. I grieved for him. Now, I can remember that sweet cute little boy and how I loved him and still do, but that MAN in the prison cell is just another strange toxic criminal MAN. He is NOT my son. Just a stranger.
I used to worry all the time about someone hurting or killing him in prison he went in as a small young white man in a prison of tough black and Hispanic gangs far outnumbering whites. Believe me prison is the last bastion of racism for sure! Whites vs blacks vs Hispanics. Strong vs weak. Dog eat dog. Shark eat shark and blood in the water brings the predators. He learned to survive though, and has had bones broken, limbs dislocated, and only God knows what else. Fortunately he didn’t tell me and I didn’t want to know.
But I no longer worry about him, and frankly if Bubba shoved a shank in his heart or cut his throat, I don’t want the body, they can bury it at the prison, and my worries would be over. I know that sounds harsh but it’s the truth. It is a SHAME and a CRIME that a man as bright and talented as my son is such a piece of trash but he is the one who decided to make the choices, and though he had a “good upbringing” and a mother and step father who loved him, a private school education, was taught to work and to respect others, taken to church and taught morals, and modeled moral behavior, he chose his path IN SPITE OF ALL I COULD DO.
You did NOT cause your son to be what and who he is, he made those choices, and yes, he got a “bad hand” at the card table of life, both genetically and environmentally, but HE MADE THE CHOICE to do what he has done. I am glad that you were ABLE to give up custody of him to the state, some places won’t let parents do that.
Since you can’t fix him, I think you need to work on YOU. YOU did not cause this, you did the best you could with what you had to work with but ultimately all of us make our own choices and get the consequences. So the decision of WHEN you cut off contact is up to you, when YOU are ready, but I don’t think that you will EVER be more ready than now. I don’t think we CAN GET READY I think we just have to DO it. If that makes any sense.
I know I sound “tough” now, but let me tell you, I have cried more than one barrel of tears, it makes the gulf oil spill look like nothing, I cried more tears than that and it was just as hard to stop up as the oil well has been. I do wish I had known what I know now earlier and done it when he was 17–would have saved me a lot of grief.
Delaying is I think like cutting a puppy’s tail off an inch at a time in an effort to be “nice”—it just prolongs the pain and multiplies it. One swift whack and “get’R-dun” is all I can suggest. God bless you And my prayers for you and for your son. Just let go and Give him over to God. Even Jesus told us, and St. Paul too, that when someone refuses to repent, after you have done all you can, you must distance yourself from them, “not even to eat with them” which basically is like NC. ((((Hugs)))))
Oxy that was such a touching, honest and heartfelt letter to roodyzoo. You have gone thru more in one lifetime than most people would be expected to suffer, but youve come out the other side. I printed out your last blog on the subject of letting go of the spaths,and it highlights my problem more than I can say. Its SPOT ON. It says it all.Its like a bucket of icy cold water to me now, I now realise that Ive wasted YEARS of my life trying to get blood out of a stone, when my spath daughters do NOT love me one bit, or give a rats as about me.The years Ive spent torturing myself with false guilt, maybe i Id done this, or not done that,NONE of it would have made any difference,to their behaviour. I know that now.How I worried about them, agonised about them, when all that time they never gave me a second thought, unless it was to touch me for money.or to insult me, or try to belittle me and mock me.Letting go, finally is so hard, but fo our very survivl, we have to do it, or go under.
Thanks again, Oxy,you area shining light of truth in a dark place. Love, Gem.XX
BlueJay, I have to tell you that you are a warrior of God’s now. You have officially put on the armor of the Lords after doing battle with the evil spirits in this world.
We all will be witnesses against evil when we meet Him and “them”.
Peace, Harmony, Serenity, and Love rocks!
Dear Gem,
Thank you sweetie, but the one thing we must remember is that EACH of us has experienced TOTAL PAIN, no matter how “much” or how “little” they have done to us it is TOTALLY devastating. Each of us experience TOTAL deception, TOTAL destruction of our selves, and we must climb back out of the abyss by our fingernails.
Each of us has the capacity to reach deep within ourselves and pull out that strength as long as we have breath left in our bodies, we can keep them from “winning” by not giving in to them.
There were times I felt like I didn’t want to live, that I had nothing to live for, there were times when the pain was too terrible to comprehend, because I loved my P son so much, but I survived and so can we all, so MUST WE ALL.
Just as one small candle BANISHES the dark, and no matter how much dark there is, it cannot banish or overcome the LIGHT OF THAT ONE SMALL SPUTTERING CANDLE, we must “let our little light shine.” Together we can light up the world! ((((Hugs)))))
Oxy, you are AWESOME! I do hope you write that book some day. You have such a way with words. That blog of yours{the 3rd last on this thread of yours,} summed up EVERYTHING for me, it was as if it were written just for me. So thank you. Yes, Viktor Frankl was right, pain fills up any container to the brim, we have all suffered in differnt ways but we all MUST pull ourselves out of the abyss, as you said.I still have a tendency to “second guess ” myself,{you know,” maybe if Id done more forgiven more, understood more”,yada yada yada,,}but I think I now am at the point of no return, an d realise theyll NEVER EVER CHANGE, and no, it WASNY MY FAULT. Whilst I was in that FOG I almost believed them when they said,”Mum, YOU are the crazy one.’
Now, GET THIS!! Older spath daughter{46,] is babysitting her 3 kids in hubbies home for 3 weeks,From this Sat.,} while he goes off to India with his Girlfriend! Hubbie is 46, GF is 30! He and spath D are STILL not divorced after 4 and a half years! Just think, shes thrown away her nice home, nice husband,kids, Mum, most of her true friends,and what does she have?She cant get a decent FT job now, as Im sure news of her embezzling A$62,000 from a former job! gets around. STOOPID!! Shes “couch surfing fora friend at the moment. She seem to value nothing. And she still has that SUPERIOR air, like shes the Queen bee, and everyone has to fall down and worship her!her life is unravelling so fast, and she cant see it! “GO FIGURE!” as you say inthe U.S.of A.
Sarah Ferguson, an Australian lady who died of breast cancer some years ago,who wrote 2 awesome books about her life,”From strength to strength,” and “The strength in us all,” used to say,
“:Dont wait for the bloody light at the end of the tunnel. Run down that tunnel, and light the BLOODY THING YOURSELF!!!
And my love and prayers, dearest Oxy, Mama Gem.XX
What does not kill us definitely makes us stronger. NOTHING from now on will EVER be that bad again!!And love to all of us!