Hey y'all...
So, it's been a blast-ended skrewt of a week of a month of a year. There's nothing quite like your mother dying to make you want to march up to the boss in charge and hit him with a big stick and demand to know just what in the fucking fuck gives. Then you might ask some questions of less celestial lawmakers, such as how we can possibly live in a governed society that considers the euthanasia of cancer ridden animals humane yet simulataneously insists upon the obscene practice of forcing a similarly doomed human being to slowly and torturously starve to death because her stomach is so ravaged by cancer nodules that it has lost the ability to function, meaning that even small sips of water are vigourously and painfully rejected along with copious amounts of seemingly endless stomach bile.
In her final days, my mother lay so depleted by the disease and anti-nausea drugs that she was unable to open her eyes let alone respond to her family. Her cheeks bore the telltale dimples of starvation. Her lips were thin. Her forehead furrowed with frustration as her mind was still sharp as a tack and she acknowledged her own indignity at having her husband take her to the toilet.
But we live in a 'humane' society. We can't possibly sanction something as abhorrent as euthanasia. Imagine the chaos! Our moral fibre is at stake! ONLY GOD ALONE CAN TAKE A LIFE!
No. Better that we force the victims and their families to suffer through agonisingly painful deaths. Better that we make them watch while their loved ones slowly die. Better for us. Better for the country.
In the past two weeks, two of my friends found themselves putting their dogs down due to disease, yet I had to wait while my mother slowly died because it pleaseth the right to lifers who insist that the sanctity of life has something to do with wringing it out to its very last, bile soaked drop.
Peace out (not you Right To Life - y'all can go get fucked with a large tree branch)
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Hey! God botherers suck!
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26 apples:
Hi Audrey,
That sounds like a horrific way to lose your mum. Some people think that people should never die or should never want to die I reckon. And I reckon that from your experience, and mine, that they should fuck off and allow someone to die with dignity and peace. There is actually a good way to die and a bad way to die, and cancer without euthanasia looks pretty fucked in my view. My mum, after 3 and a bit years of living-dying with cancer, decided to kill herself before she was any weaker. She was a brave woman to do that. And it was a way where my brother and I would not have to decide. But I don't reckon she should have had to do it the way she had to.
Also the whole thing left me really angry. I was robbed, like you have been. The anger part was unexpected, sure the sadness was and seemed 'normal', but the anger has sort of fucked other things up in my life a bit, like work. So I hope by your post you have not done anything drastic and strung your prick of a boss up or anything...even though that might be what they deserve.
Anyhow, I drop by again and see how you are doing tomorrow. I am going back to bed...insomnia...
I can't begin to imagine how shit the last weeks/months/year has been for you. Organised religion has a lot to answer for. Take care of yourself Audrey Apple.
I totally agree, Audrey. Cancer is a bugger of a way to die and I'm so very sorry your mother and her loved ones had to endure it.
Is it just me, or is it really odd that the Right to Lifers, who claim to be so caring, are in reality completely lacking in compassion?
it never ceases to surprise me that the god-botherers are so afraid of death that they will keep a person alive long after it's practical or comfortable. Or humane. You would think that they would be speeding you along, saying 'hurrah! any minute now you will be in the bosom of our lord on a fluffy cloud! playing a harp! lucky you! say hi to aunty madge for me!'
DNR is not enough. I want a DNAUPAS, Do Not Allow Unreasonable Pain And Suffering. Right now its hard, it hurts, its awful, but Im still able to have a reasonable relationship with my son. I can put up with everything thats thrown at me for the payoff of time with Bugalugs. It wont be long till I cant. When I cant be his mum anymore, I fail to see how anyone has the right to tell me I have to put up with this bitch of a disease and all the pain and sickness it causes. Everything has been taken from me by the cancer. Everything. Dont you dare tell me I am not allowed to decide when its time to call it a day and give up.
My deepest sympathies to you and yours, Audrey.
love
and
peace,
franzy
Hi Audrey
My heart goes out to you. My mother died of cancer which eventually spread to her stomach and i also had to watch her die slowly in horrific pain.
I don't know what to say, other than that in a months time you will feel better than you do now and that with each proceeding day you learn to cope with the pain.
Hi Audrey,
You're recent blogs have been inspirational to me in their intensity of emotions. Losing your mum would be hard for anyone. Having to sit by and be unable to do anything would be sould destroying.
You are so right about the whole euthanasia issue and have voiced my sentiments exactly. None of it makes any sense and until we have law makers who are prepared to show some backbone this situation will remain and more people will be prepared to break the law and go to gaol for it. I would rather that than watch a loved one suffer.
Surely they can't all think that human suffering is somehow good for us or indeed "part of god's plan" whatever that means.
Maybe we'll have to wait until we have someone leading the country who doesn't think that praying will bring rain. And given the current alternative i think that is a long way off.
You're in my thoughts
This is an issue I've struggled to understand for years Audrey. How can we possibly sit by and watch our dear loved ones suffer such horrific pain and indignity, just to please some higher being which logically may not exist. Even if he does, I find it hard to believe that he would want us to go through this. There's a big difference between maliciously killing a person and allowing someone you love to pass away before the pain and suffering becomes too much. I completely agree with Hunii- DNAUPAS is the best idea I think I've possibly ever watched.
Much love to you and your family Audrey.
xx
hugskisshugskisshugskiss
repeat ad infinitum
Proud of you dear one.
xx
edward yates - It was pretty effing horrific. Your ma was brave. We tried to get in touch with Phillip Nitschke's group, but the waiting list is months. BTW, when I talked about 'the boss', I meant the creator, karma, energy whatever you want to call it. My work has been brilliant - I couldn't ask for a more supportive workplace.
luli - It's been a surprisingly crappy year actually. Things can only get better I suppose, unless they get worse which wouldn't surprise me at this point frankly.
meva - It's a funny contradiction, isn't it? I especially love how God is the only one that can take and give life, yet they'd all be happy to take penicillin if it suited them. The great obscenity in my eyes is the insistence that life is sacred and valuable - I personally find value in life where there IS life, not where someone's wasting away on a bed unable to communicate or eat. It's the highest form of arrogance and hypocrisy to suggest that somehow we are so unique and special that we can't allow the dying some dignity, yet we happily support the act of war.
lili - Yeah, that always confused me too. Same with abortion. You'd think they'd be happy that the little tackers got to go to heaven without that pesky stain of original sin on their souls. He he. Aunty Madge...
huniii - And don't forget that it's basically subjecting Bugalugs to last memories of you as being incapacitated and, by all appearances, not the mother he knows and loves.
franzy - Thanks mate. I had a dream about you the other night - you kept switching between you and Michael J Fox circa Back to the Future.
anon - Stomach cancer is the pits. My mother always said that she wasn't afraid to die, she just didn't want to be in pain or deprivation. The irony.
anon 2 - You got it in one. I can't help but think that these cocktards have never been in this position - and if they have and they STILL think that then they're not only mental, there completely selfish. The tragedy of the Terri Schiavo fiasco still astounds me - yet the irony with that is that the critics complained it would be the height of cruelty to allow someone to starve to death. Funny how it doesn't seem to matter when it's all part of 'god's plan'.
amanda - Don't forget that God of the Old Testament condemned his most faithful follower (Job) to the extremes of suffering simply to win a bet with the devil. I rather think Bible God is capable of anything.
sublime-ation - Thanks favourite artist. Are you back in Melbourne? I'll be there this weekend for the writers' festival. We should have that bottle of bubbly (finally).
OK, I'm back to being angry, which I find to be a far easier emotion than sadness. Not to mention more action inducing than swamping sadness. This continued bullshit regarding euthanasia goes against most opinion polls, (the Howard decision maker) so preumably Hillsong, Paradise Community Cult and the reactionary Catholics are pulling the strings here. Fuckers. Do you think that assembling the Scoobies would help? Just give me something to fight.
X
It's times like this that make me want to strangle politicians necks (lovingly, of course). Of course euthanasia should be allowed, when a person is suffering.
My heart is being sent to you Audrey - full of all the very best wishes (and a bottle of vodka, too)
xo
more love... because that's all I can give.
xx
great! Come to birthday drinks Sat night, some bloggers should be comin too. I'll email you details.
Oh, Audrey. I'm so sorry. And you have every right to be angry. Surely the real 'right to life' is the right for a person to do decide what to do with their own life. And decided when and how they will die has to be among the most important of those decisions.
Have been thinking of you and hoping you are okay. Or at least, some version of whatever okay is under the circumstances.
If you have time and inclination to catch up in Melbourne, let me know. If you're busy or booked, there's always another visit.
Back like a prize-fighter!
(You can't keep a good girl down)
:o)
oh audrey.... recently my nan died and seeing her gasping for a breath was fucking awful...her organs one by one started to shut down untill the doctors said they could do no more.... and no more they did, telling my mum that she couldn't have a morphine drip because she was not "pallitive care".. so she struggled on for days dying, until my mum used her medical knowledge to give the doctors a swift kick so that morphine could be administerd as necessary....The nursing staff then had the nerve to spy on my mum and listen to her conversations to see if my mum and her sister were trying to euthanaise my nan..... scummos.....i'm sorry you had to witess such pain, something needs to be done....They talk about taking life....YOur mums life was over when she could no longer tell you she loved you or swallow, lying in bed in pain is not a life.
i drop in on your blog from time to time and though we've never interacted, this hit me in the stomach the way it would if you were a friend (because if i met you, i know i'd like you)
words are pretty meaningless at the best of times so i won't try to weave around all the usual sympathies
just take care of yourself :)
I am so sorry for your loss Audrey. What an awful way to lose someone you love.
Be gentle with yourself and give yourself time to grieve.
Dearest Audrey
What an unimaginably painful experience. I really don't feel that I can offer any other words of comfort but I would like to point you in the direction of this blog (www.tequilamockingbird.blogspot.com), there is some beautiful writing on there about dealing with all differents sorts of grief and I have found it very comforting in difficult times.
I hope it helps.
x
teaspoon
rHi Audrey,
what can I say to begin with...?
I can't write 'hope things are good' because I doubt that you will be feeling 'good' a lot of the time, so it would be a dishonest start. Instead perhaps I will just try and respond to your last response to me.
I consider myself an atheist. I'd normally never raise this with people as athiests tend to get rather shrill and patronising very quickly.
I do envy people who can find comfort in God after they lose someone.
But basically my experience meant that I did not change my view on the existence of a higher power.
I questioned, if hypothetically there was a god what kind of higher power would have let my mum suffer like that?
I reasoned if there is a higher power they either could not care less or they create suffering in the first place. Hence I have remained an atheist until this day. However, that probably does not help you.
I now believe that it is possible to find comfort, after such loss, within yourself and not from external sources like people or god. But people can be a very good distraction! And god is external concept and no-one is going to convince me otherwise, so don't bother trying.
Anyway, I can't leave just with writing that though.
Someone gave me a metaphor for understanding my grief.
Grief is like being on a raft in the ocean.
Sometimes it is rough and you have to hang on.
Sometimes it is calm.
Sometimes it is quite.
Othertimes it is a raging storm.
But eventually there will be land.
That might be useful, it might not.
best wishes
Ed
Big hug mate. All "this no man may know the hour of his own death" bollocks shits me to tears too. No-one wants to see people topping their perfectly happy grans for their cash, but why a person who is suffering and has no hope of recovery can't choose to end his or her own life is truly beyond me. Must be John Howard's stinking, Menzies-inspired fault.
Cancer is fucked, sorry your mum had to endure the care for so long, just as you say, it is not fair we can put dogs down but not our own loved ones.
Being a nurse, this topic is close to my heart. Having had my best friend die of cancer 2 years ago, it is even closer to my heart.
Audrey, your post has really hit home. I feel overwhelmed with emotion. My beautiful mum has had cancer for awhile and it seems the treatment hasn't been as effective as we hoped. The thought of seeing my mum in so much pain is absolutely the worst thought I could ever have. I really can't think of anything positive to say except that aren't we lucky to have had such fantastic mothers in the first place?
That was really beautifully expressed Audrey. Thank you for so eloquently putting words to my feelings.
Sincere condolences and much love xx
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