One thing about death is the thoughts that happen after it has touched your life. Memories, wishes, hopes, can all be hyper-analyzed and second-guessed til the cows come home or your blood pressure spikes, whichever comes first.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Over the past year, I’ve had to talk about death a lot. I’ve lost a lot of people in the past 8 months, and I’m still not right, but I noticed something that, well, isn’t the most socially acceptable thing to say out loud.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Death is a release in many ways. Not only from the mortal coil, but, amongst the living, the..relief? And that’s hard to say and admit, but it’s true.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For the past two months, I’ve been in a holding pattern while my mother-in-law declined. Watching that was painful, and to see someone I had so much respect and love for come closer and closer to death ate away at me. My wife, watching her mother encounter one medical hurdle after another, made a habit of driving an hour each way to be there for her, being her advocate in the hospital and in her hospice bed. Many a time I came home to an empty house, watching my phone for text updates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
With her gone, things are drastically different. No more hospital runs. No more light sleep, dreading the 3am phone call from a medical professional. The house projects could be scheduled again, knowing we’d be home for the AC man or the cleaners or the plumber. Possibilities opened back up, and that feels weird to say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of course, given my druthers, I’d rather have my mother-in-law still here. But quality of life is really important, and she decided she wanted no more parts of hospital beds and intubation, and I think to be able to go out on your own terms is a blessing we all won’t get to have. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
But the collective exhale…she’s in a better place, free from pain…and the world, for the living, can start spinning again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One thing about death is the thoughts that happen after it has touched your life. Memories, wishes, hopes, can all be hyper-analyzed and second-guessed til the cows come home or your blood pressure spikes, whichever comes first. Over the past year, I’ve had to talk about death a lot. I’ve lost a lot of people […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-original"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tallblackguy.com\/write\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tallblackguy.com\/write\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tallblackguy.com\/write\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tallblackguy.com\/write\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tallblackguy.com\/write\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=386"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.tallblackguy.com\/write\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":387,"href":"https:\/\/www.tallblackguy.com\/write\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/386\/revisions\/387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tallblackguy.com\/write\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tallblackguy.com\/write\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tallblackguy.com\/write\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}