Unconditional Love

Laying in bed last night, out of the blue, my hubby asks me What do you think death will feel like? Now usually our conversations at night bring tears to my eyes, but tonight it brought insight to exactly how a person who is sick truly thinks and how they are processing what is going on.

As I laid there trying to come up with an answer, I had nothing. I’ve never really thought about how death would feel. I’ve seen several people pass away, but they were not coherent enough to say how death felt nor did I think to ask such a question. Answering that question is impossible until that moment you realize you are not going live.

How do you recover from that question? How do I stop looking up answers for him? I feel the need to ease his mind. I feel the need to take that feeling away. I felt the need to slap him into reality, but this is his reality. Fatality is potentially his outcome, it’s all of our outcomes. In all reality we are all going to face death sooner or later and that’s going to have to be the answer for now.

Although it may not be the answer he is looking for, I truly don’t know what to say. As I held him he wanted assurance that he will know if he’s dying, he doesn’t want to be caught off guard and just pass. The things he thinks of is beyond anything I can even iterate on. My heart breaks for him. He said he’s not scared to die, he doesn’t want to die yet, but he just wants to know what it feels like and if he’ll know.

Researching for an answer, I found several articles. For the most part it talks about the body shutting down, the vision goes, the ability to speak stops, breathing becomes labored, the person can usually hear and respond to touch, then they slip away slowly. Because most people are medicated and cannot talk there is no way to know if the person is in pain. So for his answer to how it feels, I truly don’t think there is an answer.

I told him to trust his instincts and just live in the moment each and every day. Focus on living and dying will become easier when it’s your time. He feels much better now, but is still scared and he has every right to be. Not knowing when, but knowing that you are at the end stage of life has to be the scariest thing he will ever endure. My words to him “FIGHT” and be the strong warrior you have been your whole life. You can never be defeated unless you give up.

Keep fighting Joe, you got this.