American Journal of Hospice and Palliative Medicine®, Ahead of Print.
In the span of five years, my father, brother and mother died. I was close in both emotional and physical proximity to all three. In this role, I witnessed their struggle for dignity at the end of life in whatever manner was left to them. This was made more difficult as they shuffled through the hospital-nursing home-rehabilitation center-home health continuum of care. The patient enters one of those entry points, then seems to ricochet between them. This is an account of how illness and pain erased the life force from my loved ones while I watched helplessly from the sidelines. The emotional toll of seeing their decline was hard to calculate but what of the cost to the one who is dying? And yet each sought to carve some space to imprint their unique spark on their final days even when they had lost the ability to communicate coherently.