Cloudy with a chance of Possibility

It's ridiculously sunny out. How did I forget sunnies? Such sly brightness, impertinent.  I'm almost weirded out except that the sky is so blue and these dahlias look like sugar work and they make me so happy, I am tearing up.  But that could also be perimenopause talking. 

Early this morning I woke up in a panic.  So, I decided to write down what was making me to panic. 'Make a list, Rachel! Write it all down and then sort it. Pros, Cons. What you can fix where you need help. I SAID MAKE A LIST!'

I make my lists. Start doing my research. There is a comic strip

 One of the main areas of panic is that I don't know what I am going to do when I get to where this part of the journey takes me.

Except that - I know what I will do: take PCR tests, fly into New York. Take Lateral Flow Tests, go to Coney Island. Fly to Columbus, pick up rental car, check into hotel. Dinner at Cracker Barrel. The BD has already booked in a number of meals that are centered around Cracker Barrel. I do love this lithe and fleet girl child of mine.

What next?T  ake lateral flow test, drive to my dad's. And so forth. 

I just need to recalibrate to focus on what needs doing here. The cleaning, pruning, getting ready for the builders, sorting out too-small school clothes, uniforms ordered for school, filing my UK taxes, all that stuff that I've already been procrastinating on, it's time to do. 

I mean, I'm packed. I have eyes on all the POAs (why am I am the responsible person for so many people?! How did THAT happen? I've booked the flights, the accommodation. I've got childcare and extra support lined up. 

But the things I don't know are so many, and about to situation specifically, well...I just know the carer is in a state (who wouldn't be; for her, it's a horrible situation that she knows the extent of) and I can only push so hard against a brick wall of bureaucracy. But it also makes me think about the gloaming before the end, how it isn't always sudden and fierce. And this could be a false stop, a Braxton-Hicks of departure. 

My first adult experience with hospice and discussions about the right to medically assisted suicide, the right to die, and family rights to take comatose individuals off of life support took place in 2002. My grandfather - the kind of man who dove off 378 foot waterfalls to prove a point - needed to have routine valve replacement. But any surgery is risky, especially around hearts. The surgeon accidentally knicked an artery on the way out of the procedure. The replacement was a success but Jinx began bleeding out in the recovery area. The team couldn't find the surgeon, then Jinx flatlined. 

Without oxygen for almost 10 minutes, he was resuscitated, despite having a Do-Not-Resuscitate order. He was brain-dead, kept first in the ICU of the hospital before he was transferred to a specialty ICU hospital in Tampa-St. Petersburg, Florida. We kept him there for a month at my uncles' insistence. They simply couldn't accept he wouldn't wake up.  

I spent two weeks with him during that time, rubbing his feet, running a commentary on 'Law & Order,' which was our thing. 'Ooh! Do you remember this one? It's just before they do the Criminal Intent spin-off.'. But he wasn't there, in his body. He had moved back to Wilmington Pike and was screwing spectrally with his sons at the business he had built.

Jinx was moved to Hospice in Sebring, near the adorable retirement community he and my grandmother would spend winters. He never regained consciousness. It was not how he had intended to go out. '3 days.

The next time was with my 3-day-old son. But my first husband and I were on the same page, for different reasons. Sweet James Robert wasn't made long for this world and really, the only thing that I ever really regret is that I didn't stay longer in the room with him, that I didn't bathe him and help get him dressed, that I didn't get the opportunity to tickle his little blelue feet with grass in that churchyard of off on Marchmont Street. I do remember his last little breath against my neck, how he smelled like the seaside. How his tiny hands were so waterlogged and he would still try to grasp my finger. We turned off of the oxygen but left him on the morphine drip and I held him, milk spilling down my chest. It was still in the room. 

When it was Peggy's time, it didn't matter what she had put in place, I quickly learned. The DNR, the 3-day rule were irrelevant. 'I'm not ready to give up on her,' my dad would say, whilst more of her body necrotised and whittled away. The Monday before she died was horrific. I stood for hours listening to the whispered discussions. 'Are you ready? She might not make it. When is you dad back?' I wasn't alone, my soul sister had flown out to say goodbye and take the pressure of single parenting my daughter and my dad off of me, my first husband flew out for a week between work in New York. A friend took us to the SeaWorld, another friend made time for lunch when he was up for Corpus Christi. And I made connections with other families on the Burn Unit, spent time on the hammocks in the butterfly garden at the Center for the Intrepid. My grandmother, aunt and uncle had said their good byes in Tulsa, as had other extended family. Time becomes elastic, at times so constructing you can hardly breathe and then loosens to a free fall. 

It's why organisations like the Fisher House, St Helena's Hospice, and the Ronald McDonald House are so amazing, for families in these crises situations. It's why social workers like Marty Heinde at Senator Mike Turner's office are so amazing, such godsends. They may not be able to move the bureaucratic roadblocks, but they listen and hold space for you in that time, even when you don't think you have anything to say. Even tears make a sound, you just have to listen. 

Lo's time, well, she also did not die how she would have wanted but I have to believe she went out knowing that there was love. She died two weeks after her baby sister, and I think that was always her plan, to make sure the loose ends were tied up. 

I think about the life commemoration we'll have when Jim's time comes, about how we'll also toast to my mother, my grandmother, my great aunt. How I hope it is in the Summer or  Fall, so we can be surrounded by wildflower bouquets, like in that Over the Rhine song. So that we can laugh and cry together, even if we have to be socially distant. 

I don't know if it is imminent but it feels imminent, feels close. Not just because I'm a member of the 'Future Corpses of America.'  

It feels close but not threatening. 

So, I make my list and I do my research. What does stepping away from a life at the end look like? What is the the legal difference between medically assisted suicide, euthanasia, and assisted suicide? Why can't it just be as easy as Babe's crossing over in 'Grace and Frankie?'

Currently, the UK does not allow medically assisted suicide. I'm not sure we can that entirely on Dr Shipman, but it seems likely. 

The Dutch do and my research shows that extends to the Dutch Antilles, so guess, where I'd like to check out, on a chaise by the water, surrounded by Black eyed Suzy's, a few ferns, is Curacao, maybe with a Flamingo I'll call Fabio after the books, standing watch.

Of course, my research is flawed and I'm probably asking all the wrong questions, but it's a start.