Losing Hope

I feel badly for Terry Schaivo’s parents this morning and I feel badly
for us. Hope is gone for them completely. At least while she still
lived there was a shred of hope in their hearts. This is not to say
that I was an avid, “Put the tube back in!” person, because I really
don’t know… I wasn’t avid either way. For myself, I think I’d rather be
dead than live like she was living, but I know for sure I wouldn’t want
to be dehydrated to death. However, my family knows that and I have a
healthcare power of attorney (after all, that’s part of what a do for a
living) so there is very little question about what would happen should
this situation every arise in my case. The issue here, that I’m
thinking about this morning, is the issue of hope and how it affects a
person. As long as her body was alive and especially if her eyes were
open and she appeared to be emoting, I’m sure that they dreamed of some
sort of miracle cure. I’m sure they dreamed that there might come a day
when she would “snap out of it” and become their daughter again. Maybe
they secretly fantasized about bringing her home and nursing her back
to health, her big eyes looking up gratefully as she learned to talk
again and thank them for staying by her side. Maybe the even imagined
traveling with her, celebrating Christmas, her birthday, in their
wildest imaginations.

My dad began to suffer the first very
visible symptoms of Alzheimer’s Disease when he was only 55 years old.
That was back in 1975 back before anybody had ever really even heard of
it. By the time he was placed in a nursing home in the mid eighties, he
couldn’t talk or communicate, he was completely out of it. He made
Terry Schiavo look like the head of the class! Still, once in awhile, I
would dream that some sort of miracle cure would take place and that he
would somehow come out of the other side of this dark tunnel and return
to us. Not only did I imagine him recovering, but I imagined him
recovering to become an even better person than he had been going in to
this disease and I imagined him sitting at the table and telling me how
horrible it had been to be under the cloud of Alzheimer’s but how
wonderful it was to be back, with us, and able to be our father again.

Of
course, my REAL mind knew this was likely to always remain fantasy. The
likelihood, I knew, of my dad ever recovering was nil and I almost
prayed for his death because I was absolutely sure he would not want to
live this undignified and miserable existence. When the day came,
however, I just wasn’t expecting it. I wasn’t expecting that phone call
to be THE phone call. I guess I always thought I’d get a feeling first,
maybe a cold chill or a misty spirit visit telling me good-bye,
something special to let me know. And I also guess I took my hopes for
a miracle recovery a little more seriously than I realized because I
cried so bitterly that night, as if it really had been possible for him
to burst into good health again and become my father once more. I think
I was most surprised about my own sense of outrage that the miracle I
had obviously expected hadn’t happened. I wonder now if Terry Schaivo’s
parents aren’t feeling a little of that and I sympathize with them if
that’s the case.

For us (my daughter, her husband, and myself…)
well, there is still hope for them and for a child, but it just feels
like every time she gets her hopes up, she gets knocked down. I end up
aching for her and, as a parent, it hurts so much to watch your
children suffer and not be able to do anything to change the situation.
And how many times have I had to do that? It’s uncountable. As parents
we are constantly put through this misery. How many times do we have to
take them to the doctor and endure the punch in the stomach as these
miserable men and women in white poke them, prod them, inject them with
their needles. The bear in us wants to rise up and kill these people
that are harming our children and making them scream. It takes every
ounce of intellect and restraint to hold back those ancient instincts.
Later we have to deal with the tales of how other kids are picking on
our little darlings. Inside we are imagining the slow torture and
possible murder of those snotty little brats who have the gall to call
our kid, “fat,” or pull their hair or exclude them from the party. But,
outside, we have to remain fair and mature and set a good example for
our child. On and on this goes in life and you think it’ll let up a
little as they get older (and, in many ways it does because you’re not
around each other quite as much) but in many other ways the pain is
much more profound because the issues that your children tangle with as
adults are so much more profound.

Still, as my daughter senses
without having even experienced it YET, having children is an
unimaginable blessing. Such an unimaginable blessing that one will take
on this agony of pain just to have a child, to raise that child and to
hold that child to their heart. And when one is on their deathbed and
they think back over the things they have done in their lives, I am
sure that the connection to their children will be one of the dearest
memories they hold.

There are many things that can make life
worthwhile and full besides children. Vast numbers of women have made
astounding contributions to the world who remained childless throughout
their lives. Cory Ten Boom is but one example. There are others. The
things is, my little girl really wants a baby, and she’s my little
girl. I can’t be happy when I know her heart is being so torn apart and
I know that, given the make up of her personality and soul, her life
will feel incomplete as long as her arms remain empty. So, I still hope.