Remembering

 I had met this woman on my weekly round in the hospice. She had seemed disturbed and had asked me to sit with her for a few minutes. I had complied. She had taken me to her mother's bedside. A woman in her late eighties, dying of cancer, she had been brought there the day before. She was also an Alzheimer's patient and had been steadily losing her memory for the past few years.

The woman spoke at length about how much she loved her mother, how much she cared. She had found her mother, uncared for in her brother's home and had brought her home. She used special nutritional supplements and special diets for her mother to keep her strength up so that she could withstand the treatment for cancer. She had tried her best but was unable to cope now and so had brought her to the hospice. She cried.

I was familiar with this guilt of leaving loved ones in hospice care and so I consoled her, telling her the decision was right under the circumstances and that her mother would be well cared for. But I could see that her grief went deeper. She said that for many months now, her mother did not recognize her. She loved her mother, did her best but for her mother she was now nothing but a stranger. There was no difference between her and the maid.

I could sense her desperation, her pain. She had been losing her mother, little by little over months and years. And now she would slip away for ever and there would not even be a good bye. Not even an acknowledgement that she knew of her daughter's love for her.

I wanted to help but did not know what to say. I then remembered a film I had seen on Discovery Science on a coma patient. She had been able to recall conversations between her husband and the doctors and many other things that had happened during her coma state, she was not really supposed to know.

I told her about the film and said that even when the physical senses die, the physical brain dies, something lives on within and that something is perfectly cognizant. Its all knowing. I asked her whether she remembered anything, any slightest sign that her mother was aware of her presence.

She thought a bit and then I saw her face light up. She said that she had noticed that when her mother held her hand or arm, there was always pressure applied with the fingers. She had asked the maid, who also looked after her mother, but she had experienced no such thing. Maybe that was her mother's way of showing her that she recognized her, appreciated her, loved her. She smiled a little.

The next morning she called to inform me that her mother had passed away in the night.