Excerpt From The Front Porch Prophet

I’m reading The Front Porch Prophet by Raymond L. Atkins to write a review for Bloggernews.net and the following passage just resonated with me. I was privy to many instances where family members had to make the difficult decision to remove life support from a loved one, and I thought this captured the moment in a particularly poignant way.

A father and son are talking about the wishes of Granmama that she not be kept on life support. The father says he knows her wishes. He just can’t say the words…..

“I’ll take care of it, John Robert,” he said. It was the last thing he wanted and the only thing to do. John Robert slowly nodded. The night passed in silence, and next morning A.J. conferred with Dr. Prine. Granmama’s condition had worsened. He gave a sigh.

“It was my grandmother’s wish, and it is my father’s wish, that we remove life-support when there is no sound medical reason for it to remain.” The words hung in the air, limp as wash on the line.

“Is this your wish as well?” His wishes probably didn’t matter, but it was considerate of Dr. Prine to inquire.

“My wish is that she hops up, and we go get in the truck and go home,” A.J. sadly replied. “But that’s not going to happen.”

And so, late in the afternoon, the ventilator was removed and the life support was shut down. The candle that was Granmama began to burn toward its nub. Not long after, Clara Longstreet, mother of John Robert and grandmother of Arthur John, matriarch of the Longstreet clan, flickered out of this world and took her place beside the clumsy young husband who had waited patiently for her all those years. What Jehovah and a hay baler had put asunder, A.J. and Dr. Prine had now rejoined.

We Should Not Die Alone

One of my specialties when I was working as a chaplain was dealing with crisis situations in ER or ICU. I have always been cool under pressure, which was an asset when dealing with grieving families or families facing tough choices.

Sometimes I would have to try to contain the wild, demonstrative grief that had people flailing over gurneys and falling to the floor. Other times, it would be standing quietly while someone died with no family present.

That happened often when family members had been keeping vigil for days and days, and just stepped out for a short break. Almost as if the dying person wanted to do it alone.

But on rare occasions it was because family members did not care to be present for whatever reason.

One of the ICU nurses had a particularly hard time dealing with that kind of situation and called me one day in tears. A patient, who had been on a ventilator for several weeks with no hope of ever breathing without it, wanted the vent removed. She had two sons, who had seldom visited in those weeks, and they had different reactions when the nurse called to tell them what their mother wanted.

The first son said that was fine, and no, he did not want to come to the hospital when the vent was removed.

The second son said that was not fine, and he would come to the hospital with a lawyer if need be to prevent his mother’s wishes from being carried out.

The woman was conscious and able to communicate and had already signed a Do Not Resuscitate (DNR) order. The legal department from the hospital drew up another document outlining her most recent request and that was read to her before she signed it.

Then there was another conference call to the second son in which the doctor again explained that there was no hope of recovery for his mother, and we now had a document signed by her that she wanted the vent removed.

Legally, there was nothing else the son could do, but as the nurse said, if he cared that much about his mother to fight the removal of the vent, he could have cared enough to come and be with her when she died.

Everything was done to make the woman comfortable and before the vent was removed, I had a little service for her that she had requested. Then she nodded and the respiratory therapist turned off the machine.

The nurse cried. The therapist cried. And I cried. Not for the fact the woman died. But for the fact that she had to die with strangers around her bed.