Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Elphaba
Jan hasn't answered the phone on the multiple times that I have called her. I reached her son tonight and learned that she knows that I have called, but she is heavily medicated for pain and primarily sleeps throughout the day. She no longer knows one day from the next and is not eating enough to sustain herself. -snip- I am not waiting for her "permission" to be by her side any longer.
|
Reading your posts, elph, has brought back some of my own memories and regrets from 2005, when my grandmother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and died within 6 months. I urge you to visit your friend as often as you can, regardless of whose "permission" might be necessary (unless she outright tells you she doesn't want you there... but at the point she's at, I don't see this happening). I wish I could have been there more often for my grandmother, especially when she had gotten to that point of heavy medication and complete dependence on other people for survival.
I am in school on the east coast but flew back to Seattle about once a month when I was able (I had to go to Africa and Iceland for fieldwork for about half the time my grandma was sick, which tore me up in many ways)... it was so very hard to watch her condition deteriorate further each time I visited her. But I wouldn't have taken any of those moments back, seeing her. I only wish I had more of them, and I see that more clearly now than I did then. The last time I saw her was about a month before she died, when she was still cogent enough to recognize me and converse. I could not go home during the last few days of her life... I made it for the funeral... but oh, how I wish I could have been there to hold her hand one more time.
Elph, be there as much as you are able. Hold her hand. Talk to her. Let her know that she is loved. And come back here for hugs when you need them.