The ride towards death

She screamed no and didn't want to enter the ambulance, that day when her husband had called for one. It took them more than 45 minutes to convince her to come with them. She must have understood that it would be her last ride. She had been sleeping for two days straight and were possibly just exhausted, although her cancer certainly had taken its toll on her. Just a couple of weeks earlier, my mother was so happy to plan for moving to a hospice where they would let her Golden Retriever come and visit too and we were all planning for her to receive a soft ease into the inevitable, that we thought still laid months ahead.

About a month earlier, I had received a pamphlet on what to expect and prepare for, when someone was about to die, from a friend of a friend, whose mother also had died from breast-cancer. It said things that when it was drawing near, the hospital wouldn't provide any food, electrolytes or even water, only morphine through a pump. And that we could wet her lips with a special stick, but should deny her water, for her body to easier shut off. My mother convinced her husband to go and get her some fruit-soup of a special kind she liked that she drank midweek and thus was able to talk a little, to some of all people who came to say their goodbyes. Her husband Christer, later shared with me that we should all remember that although we all were sad, we only had one person to say good-bye to, while she had many, she had said. I touched her hand, her cheek and said mine.

I am so sorry she had to go this way. Who is to say when it's time?