By Dianne M. Ullrich
My mother died of advanced breast cancer in
September 1999. She had battled the disease for 12
years – successfully for eight of those 12 years. In
1995 the breast cancer reoccurred in her lung and quickly
began to spread to the rib cage and sternum. After ten
years of successful treatment with hormone therapy, chemo
was required. We were told there was only
a fifty-fifty chance that Mother’s cancer would respond to
treatment.
The worst scenario proved true. After the first round of
chemo, the doctor described Mom’s cancer as “beaten down,
but not gone.” She said there would be further
treatment, but the best we could hope for was slowing
progression of the disease. Each round of chemo
would prove to be more difficult than the last. Four
months after the first round of chemo, Mom’s needs and the
sheer number of doctor and hospital visits forced me into
the role of sole caregiver. I left my job and stayed
home.
Those last 18 months of Mom’s life were undeniably a
painful, difficult experience, yet they were also beautiful.
Sometime during those 18 months, I came to the realization
that I had been blessed with a rare opportunity and
privilege – to love literally to the very moment of death
the person whose love had given me life. Prior to this
time, I had always believed that life was our greatest gift;
but my experience with suffering and death left me with a
strong conviction that faith, not life, is our greatest
gift. Life is ever changing, life ends. Faith is
a constant – it is a gift that is always there, if we just
accept it.
When you are dealing with the terminally ill (particularly
in the role of caregiver), life as you knew and loved it
suddenly comes to a screeching halt. You are not only
dealing with your emotions (watching someone you love and
care about die), you are also dealing with their fragile
emotions. The terminally ill person has to come first.
You really have the easy task. You only have to deal
with losing the person; they have to deal with losing
everything and facing life’s ultimate limit – death.
I had come from a corporate background where I was trained
to identify the problem, assess the situation, and come up
with solutions. I was trained to control the situation
– not to allow the situation to control me. Suddenly,
I was powerless at a time when I desperately wanted and
needed to be in control. This thing, this disease, was
rapidly changing, killing my mother and my best friend.
I couldn’t do anything about it. I wasn’t in control
of the situation. At the same time, Mom seemed to be
ignoring the hopelessness of her situation – always planning
for the future, focusing only on the positive things the
doctor said, asserting that her prayers would be answered
and the next round of chemo would put her cancer in
remission.
On the outside, I worked hard to maintain an appearance of
being in control. An attitude of life as usual was
necessary to keep up Mom’s morale. A positive attitude
was more important, more potent than any treatment.
Inside I was angry, angry at this thing, this disease that
couldn’t be controlled -- angry that I could not make things
better. I don’t ever recall being angry with God in
the sense that He was causing this – but angry in the sense
of “where are you when I need you the most?”
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