ARTICLES / General /
A Terminal Diagnosis Does Not... /
Other ArticlesBy Linda Campanella
When my father began our phone conversation
with the words, "Are you sitting down?" I knew
the news to follow would not be good; but I
never in my wildest dreams imagined he would
tell me my 73-year-old mother was terminally ill
with metastatic lung cancer. I had not even
begun to prepare myself for the day I would lose
either one of my parents. A lucky gene pool had
caused me to believe confidently that both would
live well into their nineties. No such luck.
Every day a daughter or son somewhere, or a
sister or brother or parent, gets the news that a
cherished loved one has been diagnosed with a
terminal disease. The shock, accompanied by a
ferocious sense of foreboding and a powerful dose of
premature grieving, can be overwhelming and
paralyzing. Yet we need not be consumed by the
depths of despair; and for the ones we love and will
lose, it is vital that we climb out of the depths as
quickly as possible so they won't fall in
themselves.
Two days after getting my father's call, I
suddenly had a moment of clarity and an epiphany: my
mother's life was going to end sooner than we
expected or wanted, but it hadn't ended yet. So I
committed myself to helping my mother live, and live
joyfully, until I found myself in the position of
helping her die.
If you receive the dreaded call, what can you do?
How can you inject living into dying?
How can you let the sunshine break through the
menacing cloud overhead?
1. First, reel yourself in from that
place of anticipatory grief to which the
diagnosis catapulted you. No one has died yet, so
stop grieving a loss that hasn't occurred. Rather
than anticipating death, we can choose to embrace
and enjoy life. The story of my mother's life was
still being written, and so there was no need to
allow our minds to fast-forward to the story's
ending. We were intent upon writing quite a few more
chapters.
2. Realize that while there is nothing
you can do to keep your parent or loved one from
dying, there is much you can do to help him or her
keep living. For us, tomorrow was a day to
look forward to because of the possibilities and
happiness it could bring, rather than a day to dread
because it would bring us one day closer to
death. Make what time remains a period filled with
purpose and passion.
