Barb spoke of “Making Love” – a phrase that has new
meaning to each of us, and will represent something Yetta learned and taught in
her last months…
Words that speak to me of her dying are curiousity, courage
and grace.
She loved learning…. Both formal and informal. She loved teaching …. Both formal and
informal. She learned on the computer -
photo shop, computerized embroidery, simply accounting… She learned from books, travel, and courses. Mostly she learned from people. When she
spoke about teaching her stories were all about learning. She was creative and
curious in matching strategies to meet the learning needs of the individual
student.
In her dying she was curious about the process. When Dr Carr told her that she had a terminal
illness, she immediately asked, “How long do I have?” and “What will it look
like?”
She was curious about the caregiving. I expect that she was analyzing us all and
writing a narrative exploring the experience of dying, and the observed
experience of caregiving.
She was curious about concepts. She played with the
term “It takes a village to raise a child.” And for several days she would say
“It takes a village to raise a child and it takes a community to die…. No, that
does not work. We need another word
there… what is it?”
Finally one day she said “I know, It takes a village
to raise a child and it takes a village to do the dying”. Eventually she said to her friend Dell “It
takes a village raise a child and it takes a village to embrace dying.”
I think of her courage. Courage is not always pretty. Courage is to “feel
the fear and do it anyway”. Yetta was as complex as was curious and as courageous
as she was complex. She had fears, she
had issues, she had baggage… just like the rest of us. But in life adventures she felt the fear and
did it anyway.
·
Move to Canada at 19 and take on a
sales job responsible for all of Western Canada … let’s do it!
·
Build a house and garden out of a
small patch of forest at 60+ … let’s do it!
·
Go to Morocco at 80 with her
husband, drive across the desert, get on a horribly uncomfortable camel… let’s
DO it…!
·
Face death and “do it well”…. she
did it.
Yetta was curious, she was courageous. Yetta was a fighter. It is interesting to me then that one of the
most recent lessons she has taught me is about dying with grace.
(I chose to include this thought about GRACE with the
hope that we might consider the song Amazing Grace with additional insight.)
In 2004 I took a course titled “Dying with
Grace”. I thought, “Who would give a course such a
title? Who would consider themselves worthy to teach such a course? And if they think that they will teach me to
die with grace then good luck!” The
woman who taught the course was a bio ethicist who Yetta would have loved. She defined Grace as “unmerited favor”. As we learned together, I came to wonder if “Dying
with Grace” was about showing unmerited favor to life, to God, to one another.
I wondered if Dying with Grace was about showing kindness when it is not
deserved, and if it was about not being
bitter when illness comes to visit.
Yetta faced her diagnosis and death with grace. She said, “I am 81 and life does not owe me
anything…” She said “I am glad they did
not offer me surgery or radiation therapy. If they could prolong my life
another month or two or three, I would still have to die… so the money should
be used for better things.” In fact she befriended death and invited the
process to teach her. She then announced
“I am going to die well”. When I asked
her what “Dying Well” meant she said simply, “Relationships”.
Throughout the past two months she described this
period of her life as the most beautiful. She said that she could not have
planned it better! In her last days, the
last days when she was still able to speak her words were of gratitude and
appreciation. Yetta taught me more about dying with grace, and in the process taught me yet-ta nother lesson about living.
Oh Amazing Grace!
(from Kath)
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