The Jack McAfghan Series

The Jack McAfghan Series
More to Come!
Showing posts with label end of life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label end of life. Show all posts

Tuesday


Dear Jack,
My little girl died unexpectedly. We still don't know what happened. We came home to find her lifeless body, still warm. We had a funeral for her and decided to cremate her.  It's been very hard and there isn't a day that goes by that I don't think of her and feel that heaviness in my heart... It's been three months and it just doesn't get easier. I still miss her terribly. I look at her photos and think why? My baby. 
Samantha


Dear Samantha, 

It's always hard not to know what happened. It makes you feel really bad when they have passed alone, even though there was no way you could have known. Truly, however, we are never alone. We are surrounded by love as we prepare for the journey. Please don't keep focusing on her final hours. She wants you to remember the good times, there were so many! When you dwell on her death it keeps you stuck and you cannot heal. If you dwell on something, dwell on the life! Dwell on the love. LOVE is what heals you. She is full of love for you still and she is doing very well over the Rainbow Bridge. Prayers for your healing. 

Don't forget: Try to focus on the Love not the loss. If you focus on the love and read our books and join our group it will get easier, I promise. Love. It's where the power is for both of you. It's what keeps you connected to each other from lifetime to lifetime.  

Love, 
Jack 

Monday

The One Thing We Can Control at the End of Life



When a human being stops eating due to illness and decline at the end of life, it can often indicate that they are ready to give up the fight. When one is helpless, frail, disabled and infirmed, they must rely on someone else to meet their basic needs. Sometimes the only control one has at this point is to clench the teeth and refuse to eat. 

So many people who are caregivers don't understand this. They force feed or think that the patient is being uncooperative or unreasonable. It is not true in every case, but often the patient is communicating in the only way they know how. Refusing food is the only choice they have. They are saying "Enough Is Enough". 

Us animals often do the same thing. This is one of the clues for you, of knowing when the time is coming to help us on our way. 


Saturday

Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Choosing Pain Over Pills


There seems to be a lot of guilt over the issues of pain pills and end of life treatments. People feel guilty if they didn't give them. People feel guilty if they did. People just feel guilty, it seems to me, no matter what they do or did. 

Every four hours she waited to give me my pain pills. I fought with her every time. She would cry as she forced them into my mouth. In our whole life together she had never had to force me to do anything I didn’t want to do.


I just didn’t want those pills. I was in pain, yes, but she didn’t know how awful those pills were for me! She kept trying to hide them in things – like cheese or bacon or yogurt or peanut butter. She thought I might not know they were in there. I didn’t even want to eat my favorite things at that point … and I sure didn’t want to eat those pills!

The last one she gave me was wrapped in a peanut butter cube. I remember how she watched the clock until 10 p.m. when she could give me the next dose. I took it. At 1 a.m. I sat up and looked her right in the eyes. I was very weak and going back and forth in consciousness. It was the first time I had sat up in many hours. She was spellbound, looking back at me, looking deep into my eyes. 

"What Jack. What is it?  Do you need something?" she asked me. I surprised her by spitting the entire peanut butter pill cube out on the floor between us. She knew then that I was serious about not wanting those pills! I lay my head back down and I crossed the Rainbow Bridge two hours later, clear thinking and unaffected by pills in my system.

I watched her after my spirit left my body. It was fascinating how she cleaned up the place! She washed all the dishes, the blankets, the floor. She had a little bowl where she had mixed the pills into yogurt. I watched her take the tip of her finger as she took a teeny tiny taste of the mixture. She recoiled. “Blech!” It was the most disgusting thing she had ever tasted. God knows I had tried to tell her.


I will be letting this memory go as soon as I finish this message to you. Like all dogs, cats and other animals, we leave such memories far behind. We are not like humans who torment themselves by dwelling on things long after the moment is gone. How is it that people can feel guilty about so many things? They deprive themselves of the sweetness of memories by embittering themselves with the guilt over a few painful moments.
To you, it all is Black and White. You are guilty or you're not. YOU'RE NOT! You're not guilty!!
Us animals, we only remember the good things. It’s the only way to be happy. In fact, when we arrive at the Rainbow we are required to shed every memory that was anything but happy. We cannot carry that kind of baggage with us. We are supposed to stay free and lightweight so we can fly like the angels we now are. The old baggage weighs us down and we must be rid of it before we come here. 

From here we often observe the ones we love, and we can only hope and pray that they will shed those memories too. They only harm and weigh heavily as they block the love that connects us. As long as guilt and shame and sadness are in the way, we cannot come together. We must be at the same level of peaceful vibration to be able to access one another. 


Please do what you can to stop thinking of the sad things and focus on the many many many amazing memories that took place in our beautiful life together. If you can do this, when the time comes, you will be able to cross over the Rainbow easily too. Please try!  In the meantime, I love you!

The Gift of ONE MORE DAY

How many of us have watched someone we love suffer for too long? They have spent weeks, months, years, declining and then, right after we make the decision to let them go, they surprise us by having a really good day?! It can throw us for a loop.   


One night Grady pee-ed all over our bed.  Our bed was also our "den," and any dog knows you don't dirty your den. This is how sick she was, to not be able to honor that. She was 14.  She had been incontinent(and arthritic and going blind and deaf over the years). Kate said to her that night, "I can't keep doing this." Kate was so tired from cleaning up after her and carrying her everywhere. Nonetheless, she did it for another two years.  It was all because she was waiting for God to call for Grady because she didn't want to have to make The Decision. 

She ultimately contacted the vet and scheduled euthanization for Monday. Sunday night we all slept on the floor with Grady instead of bringing her up onto our bed like we always did. It was the first time in many nights that she didn't get up every hour. She slept the whole night through! She got up in the morning, went outside with me with a wag in her tail! She gave a playful little awkward jump when I teased her... and she ate all of her breakfast! We couldn't believe it. Our hearts were full. 

It would be easy to second-guess whether we were doing the right thing, to move forward with the plans for the day. Maybe if we just slept on the floor with her every night she'd sleep through the night.... maybe this, maybe that, maybe, maybe, maybe...



Fortunately, our experience working with people on hospice reassured Kate. We had seen it over and over again in our therapy work. Many times people linger on their deathbeds; their breath is slowing, their feet are turning blue... and then all of a sudden one day, they rally back! Where they were confused they are now lucid. Those who were lethargic are miraculously alert and clear for the first time in a long time. They give us the impression that they are not dying after all! Oh everyone is so excited! They are clearly turning a corner and they will be well again! Our prayers have indeed been answered! 

Then, in 12 or 24 or more hours, they pass peacefully. It is not this way for everyone, but this has happened often in Kate's thirty years of experience. It matters not the age or the condition or the setting. I think perhaps it is one final chance for the body to have its Swan Song. When we know we can never do something again that we've always done, we always want to do it one more time. Sometimes that's what the final day is for. It gives us a chance to have one more time around before we transform into something else.   


"One more day
One more time
One more sunset, maybe I'd be satisfied..." 
(Click Here to listen to the song by Diamond Rio) 

Dear Jack: How Do I Know When to Put My Pet to Sleep?


euthanasia, put to sleep, dog, pet, loss, sickness, death, pain, life, rainbow, quality of life, guilt, when

"Tomorrow I'm sending my dog to rainbow bridge. I'm so hurt, confused and guilty. Yesterday morning he could hardly walk. His arthritis is bad. Been on pain killers for years. He also has prostate cancer and a tumor on his adrenal gland...They gave him morphine at the vets. What a heart breaking evening and night. He cried so much. Confused from the morphine. But today he is great. Walking playing eating. He hasn't been this way in days. I know it's because he's not in pain but it'll wear off. Is it worth giving him more morphine and putting him through nights like last night again just to keep him around? I don't know what to do.... He's up every hour crying to go out to pee, difficulty pooing... Oh God I guess I'm looking for someone to say it's time that I'm doing the right thing. This is the hardest thing I've ever done in my life." 


Dear One: First of all, you can FEEL guilty, but YOU ARE NOT GUILTY. He has struggled for a very long time and weighing his quality of life with his pain and his condition is imperative. Do not hold him to you with your love because the love won't die when he does. You need to look at everything else that is going on. How would you feel if you were him?  

It is such a hard decision but the loving thing to do is let him go. Our Grady suffered for several years with chronic pain and was deaf and blind. We made the appointment to put her to sleep on a Monday, and Sunday night and Monday morning she was better than she had been in many months. We thought of it as a final gift for all of us. Later when it was over, we wished we had done it sooner for her. She was so at peace. You will see and you will know then that you did the right thing. Wishing you strength between here and there. <3 

Love, Jack