{"id":1414,"date":"2012-01-26T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2012-01-26T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/?p=1414"},"modified":"2012-01-26T05:00:00","modified_gmt":"2012-01-26T09:00:00","slug":"one-year-ago-today-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/?p=1414","title":{"rendered":"One Year Ago Today"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a><\/div>\n

I can hardly believe it has been a whole year. One year ago today<\/a>, I held the hand of my 96-year-old aunt as she lay bewildered, uncomfortable, and miserable in a hospital bed. She briefly opened her eyes, and asked where she was and what happened.<\/p>\n

… a brief interlude of lucidity among the deep clouds that Alzheimer’s Disease wrought on her brain.<\/p>\n

I explained that she had a heart attack, and that she was being treated in a hospital.<\/p>\n

“A hospital? I don’t want to be here…”.
<\/a>
Gosh that hurt. “Of course, sweet aunt, I know you don’t want to be here, but you’re not well enough to be home right now.”<\/p>\n

Then she closed her eyes, and I thought she was going to sleep. Suddenly, she opened her eyes wide and reached for my hand again. With strength I didn’t think she had, she pulled me close. She kissed me, and said the last words that I would ever hear from her,<\/p>\n

“Thank you, thank you. I love you.”<\/p>\n

… then she closed her eyes, dropped her hand, and stopped breathing.<\/p>\n

The alarms on her monitors started bleeping and screeching and making quite a cacophony. I just sat there with her, and two of her caregivers who were there with us.<\/p>\n

Nurses ran in, but honored our previous discussions — my aunt had a “DNR — Do Not Resuscitate” order — so they silenced the alarms and left the room.<\/p>\n

I had made my peace, knowing that I had done everything possible that I could do to ensure that she was happy and safe in the last years of her life, up until her dying day. I have many fond memories of this memorable time in my life<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The rest of that day was a blur. I talked to her sons who live out-of-state, and who made arrangements to come as soon as they could. My siblings offered to come look after me, but there really wasn’t anything that they could do. I just wanted to go home and be held by my partner. <\/p>\n

Soon enough, I regained my composure and strength, and moved on to do what needed to be done, to honor my aunt and observe her final wishes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Dealing with death is never easy, but when you know in your heart that the loved-one you cared for was happy and that you had fulfilled all promises and moreso, then the grief is not as painful. Sure, I cried, but I slept well that night, too, knowing in my heart that my aunt was finally at peace.<\/p>\n

Life is short: show those you love how you love them, each and every day.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I can hardly believe it has been a whole year. One year ago today, I held the hand of my 96-year-old aunt as she lay bewildered, uncomfortable, and miserable in a hospital bed. She briefly opened her eyes, and asked … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1414\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bootedmanblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}