By Emily Rosen M.S., M.A.
Should I write about the woman sentenced to 20 years in prison for having shot in the air at her abusive husband?
Should I write about Syria, Iran and Russia and the U.N.’s attempt at showing new “muscle?”
Should I write about Ted Cruz, Obamacare, the debt ceiling and the government shutdown?
None of the above, while I am sitting in the hospital ICU watching my 87-year-old husband fight for life, and with a mind more lucid than it’s ever been, making his own quality of life decisions.
Yesterday, it was hospice care. This morning, he was dictating his obituary until he took a last-ditch test that, surprising to everyone concerned, indicated that he would actually be able to ingest some food and that he, therefore, had a chance of some kind of recovery.
He is now infused with hope. HOPE is good, even when it denies reality.
Illness in old age carries with it the extra burden of existential questioning about the value of life, the probing of one’s belief system, and the actual challenge that calls for the decisiveness of action or the passiveness of inaction. When is enough, too much? When does a person let go and accept the inevitable; when does he or she fight, struggle and submit to a mountain of indignities, probings, heroic measures that can never return him/ her to full youthful vigor, but MAY POSSIBLY keep him breathing and alert to pleasant physical surroundings and the warmth and caring of those who love him?
It helps to realize that other people have been faced with these kinds of conundrums for ages and, until it happens to YOU, there are no resolves that are binding.
So we go for the “one day at a time” model that seems to work, even as days turn to weeks and months. This gives us time to count blessings, probe each other’s minds, reminisce, look at old family pictures and mostly sharpen our sense of humor. Laughing has been the best medicine for both of us – laughter and total honesty about all aspects of the situation.
And then there are the tender moments that only many years of marriage (59) and the prospect of “an end” can elicit – different indeed from the passionate erotica of “new love.”
And when my husband assures me not only of his love, but of his conviction that I have been a perfect wife for him – adding, “Even better than Rita Hayworth or Marilyn Monroe,” I know I have done much better even than having my hands enshrined in The Hollywood Walk Of Fame at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.
And the beat goes on.
