Her fingers twitch from time to time. Little twitches and bodily movements. All these cause a flood of exultations and comments from visiting relatives who are struggling hard to find something (anything) to say to us. Everything is a positive optimistic forward looking postulation "she will get better" "there has been so much improvement" and "things can only go up". Do they actually believe it or are they paying lip service for the sake of having smth to say? It is so hard to find anything appropriate and non-awkward to say around a hospital bed where the patient is unconscious. Do you talk to them where the words meet silence? Not for long. Do you talk to the other visitors about smth outside this depressing world of sickness? No for fear of being seen as flippant. Do you talk about their current health status? Oh yes, but obviously negative pessimistic projections will be met with stony faced horror. The obvious solution is thus this flood of empty euphemisms. I am tired of it.
Just come, pray and think good things silently in your head. Leave when you want to leave. Why on earth must ppl constantly have to fill this void with words. There is nth that can be said in this cold empty clinical environment anymore.
Another thing:
Are all these rituals- hospital visits, home visits etc and even funerals (in yet another setting worlds apart from this one) done for the benefit of the departed/invalid/sick one or done for the benefit of those left behind in the world of the healthy?
It seems inclined towards the latter.
Instead of letting her go semi-peacefully, we operate and leave her in this helpless state... Just so we can face ourselves, face our own consciences, face the questions of relatives with a "we tried everything. Shes alive. But the surgery left her vegetative."
Is it selfish insistence on our part, willfully turning a blind eye on possible truth? Is it blind hope that humans instinctively clutch to because the alternative is too sudden... too depressing to contemplate? The permanence of a person's passing is too harsh a reality, so we cling to everything else, grasp at all straws possible at all cost.
But is it really what my mom would have wanted? This bleak helpless form, unable to control the most basically instinctive of actions from eating drinking to coughing out phlegm to passing motion and bowel movements. When her eyes open periodically thru the day and we crowd around saying hello and "asking" her how she's feeling and praying and etc, her eyes remain glassily fixed on a point in the distance. How do we expect her to miraculously recognize our faces and be aware of our presence when the most basic of needs have to be done for her?
When she was awake and well (as she was one month before this... before the shit hit the fan), she already seemed to have a bored/ennui-filled view of life as it was.... Even though it was a life where she could do almost anything she wanted from day to day. Children no longer need to be handled, maid handles housework, husband allows her to go out any time she wants, spend any $ and go anywhere. What would she think of life now? I really don't know. She once told us being vegetative was the most pitiful unliveable form of existence and she would not want it. But my dad refused to see this recount from me and my bro as an absolute expression of her opinion. And now here we are.
Is this blind grasping of straws by dad or is this over-pessimism by me? Are we doing this as a way to assuage our inner demons and avoid facing the truth or are we doing this because it is the right choice my mom would have wanted anyway? To be kept "alive" as long as possible, no matter the cost, no matter whether it is just the body and not the mind that is present.
I don't know anymore. Are there even any answers to be had?
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