This is a six-sentence challenge story in response to the GirlieOnTheEdge blog. The prompt word is code and you should go see how others have met the challenge. In this context, to be coded is to be resuscitated when your heart stops.
She’s somebody’s grandmother and he visits every day. Mostly she knows him, but sometimes she calls him by his grandfather’s name. He smiles and shows me the pictures, side by side, one blond and one dark. “I don’t mind,” he says. “We look just alike and she loves us both.
“I’ll miss her,” he says, “but she doesn’t want to be coded—says there’s nobody left knows what she knows. She attended all their funerals.”
They used to call pneumonia the old man’s friend, now it’s the DNR.
Good story, so true in so many cases.
That’s a fine take on the prompt. Was just talking about that, how it must be to see all your friends leave the Earth Plane first. Yep, no coding at that point.
It felt pretty uncomfortable at my 50th class reunion to see how many classmates were already gone.
I have a feeling I would do the same. Once you outlive your friends and are uncertain as to remaining family, a reunion on the other side may begin to look preferable.
My grandmother had been going to funerals for people she didn’t even know–because no one was left to say goodbye and an unattended funeral was more than she could allow.
such a new (and poignant) element in this our modern lives… to have the choice, to be asked to decide if there are any others left
My mother had end-of-life instructions, but sis and I had to make the final choice not to treat the very treatable. We didn’t prolong her misery. She’d been begging to be let go.
Stark reality well portrayed.
Very well told! Comes a point where it is simply time.
Thanks. I did an unkind thing to my daughter-in-law. I really like her, but she’s physically close by a few miles and level-headed, and I’ve let her know what I want. I’ve given her my medical power of attorney. Now the trick is not to lose my mind.
I’m with Grandma. Let me go when my time comes. I think it’s a shame we need a DNR to allow nature to take it’s course.
It’s when nature doesn’t take its course quite clearly enough that I want a written directive and a representative. In Mom’s case, she was dying of dementia an inch at a time and begging us to end it all for her. She came down with a very treatable urinary tract infection and as her representatives we (my sister and I) let it take its course. One of the hardest decisions I’ve ever made.
I wonder how many people actually accept the cycle of life and leave.