I'm endeavoring to get back to writing daily. Maybe this old blog is a good place to start. Not sure. Only time will tell. Consistency has not been my strong suit since 2010 I have been out of the nine to five Western work world since then, but I wonder if I was ever very consistent in the sense of doing the same thing the same way for an extended period of time.
2017 was a rough year because my mother passed away. She died on December 18, 2017 after a seven year decline into dementia. She became less and less herself as the years went by and this was sad and depressing for everyone, most of all my father. But he coped very well.
When her death was probable according to the doctors, he called me in Pakistan to say it was up to me but perhaps I should come home so i did. I was relieved to be able to get there in less than a day. I booked the flight at 4:00 pm and was on the plane later the same night. Since Pakistan is nine hours ahead of NY, I arrived at JFK just a day later.
She died with my brother, my father, her aide, Melanie, our housekeeper Vickie, and myself in the room. She was at home, in the hospital bed she had slept in for most of those seven years. The hospital released here on hospice care, which means she came home to die. She received oxygen and medication but no food for about five days and then she slowly and quietly died. There was a day or two of difficult breathing at the end. The death rattle is a real thing and it is quite horrible to listen to.
When you hear it, you start to think every breath will be the last. and when the last one finally does come, there is a sense of relief.
I am a person who believes in God. While she was alive and able to comprehend, I tried to get my mother to believe in God and to have faith. She would often get annoyed at me for bringing up the subject of God or religion and would ask me not to talk about it. I still tried, but mostly by silently asking God to open her heart and especially for Him to have mercy on her when she could no longer speak or eat or do anything for herself. God describes the conditions of dementia, Alzheimers and senility in the Holy Quran:
16:70. God has created you, then He causes you to die. And among you are those who are deferred to the age of senility so they do not know, of what they once knew, anything at all. Surely God is All-Knowing, All-Powerful.
Here final death did have a quality of mercy to it and I take that as a sign fom God that he answered my prayers. While she took her final breath, she raised her hands. For many months before her death, se did not have much control over her hands. They were mostly useless to her, curled in on themselves.
2017 was a rough year because my mother passed away. She died on December 18, 2017 after a seven year decline into dementia. She became less and less herself as the years went by and this was sad and depressing for everyone, most of all my father. But he coped very well.
When her death was probable according to the doctors, he called me in Pakistan to say it was up to me but perhaps I should come home so i did. I was relieved to be able to get there in less than a day. I booked the flight at 4:00 pm and was on the plane later the same night. Since Pakistan is nine hours ahead of NY, I arrived at JFK just a day later.
She died with my brother, my father, her aide, Melanie, our housekeeper Vickie, and myself in the room. She was at home, in the hospital bed she had slept in for most of those seven years. The hospital released here on hospice care, which means she came home to die. She received oxygen and medication but no food for about five days and then she slowly and quietly died. There was a day or two of difficult breathing at the end. The death rattle is a real thing and it is quite horrible to listen to.
When you hear it, you start to think every breath will be the last. and when the last one finally does come, there is a sense of relief.
I am a person who believes in God. While she was alive and able to comprehend, I tried to get my mother to believe in God and to have faith. She would often get annoyed at me for bringing up the subject of God or religion and would ask me not to talk about it. I still tried, but mostly by silently asking God to open her heart and especially for Him to have mercy on her when she could no longer speak or eat or do anything for herself. God describes the conditions of dementia, Alzheimers and senility in the Holy Quran:
16:70. God has created you, then He causes you to die. And among you are those who are deferred to the age of senility so they do not know, of what they once knew, anything at all. Surely God is All-Knowing, All-Powerful.
Here final death did have a quality of mercy to it and I take that as a sign fom God that he answered my prayers. While she took her final breath, she raised her hands. For many months before her death, se did not have much control over her hands. They were mostly useless to her, curled in on themselves.
