How my grandmother cheated Death

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“I feel like I’m just doin’ time. That’s a prison thing, right?” my grandmother asked, from her recliner.

At 93 she wasn’t yet completely infirm, but she was close. Barely able to walk with a walker, she required the assistance of one of the attendants at the fairly high-end assisted living facility in Arizona where she resided (and where I was visiting from California) to load her into a wheelchair and push her to and from the large communal dining room at meal times.

A mountain of medications, adult diapers, all that stuff. But her mind was still sharp (that’s a crucial piece of this story; we’ll come back to it).

“Yeah, Grandma,” I replied. “It’s a prison thing.”

She nodded briefly, then shook her head. “How the hell did I get like this?” It was a rhetorical question.

Humans have gotten so good at not dying (at least keeping death at bay for as long as possible) that we frequently find ourselves on the wrong end of a very lopsided “quality vs. quantity” equation.

This was the terminus my grandmother saw rapidly approaching. Her greatest fear, the thing she wanted least, was to spend her final years unable to get out of bed, completely infirm and “all doped-up” as she put it. She’d made this very clear to my mother, who lived close by, and visited almost daily.

The tipping point came a few months after I’d visited, when my grandmother fell and bruised her hip, and was moved from her second-floor apartment (an airy space with a view) downstairs to the true “nursing home” part of the facility, where residents who needed more care were housed. Confined to a hospital bed in a tiny room, my grandmother pulled my mother close when she came to visit. “This,” she said, “is exactly what I don’t want.”

It was agonizing for my mom to see her mother like this. 

She considered all the imperfect options: Bring her back to the house where she’d lived for the last 40-plus years and hire some sort of in-home care? Bring her to her own (my mom’s) home, and try to make that work? Convince her to stick it out in hopes the situation would improve? My mom was more than willing to do whatever; she just didn’t know the answer.

For their part, the nurses at the facility told my grandmother she could return to her apartment once she’d completed some physical therapy and was medically cleared to do so. (Her response: physical therapy?! Are you nuts? I’m 93 years old.)

In an attempt to cheer her up, they wheeled her to the facility’s in-home salon (I said it was a high-end place) to get her hair done.

This didn’t go as planned.

During my time in the firefighting/EMS world, we ran countless medical calls to convalescent hospitals and assisted living facilities. A few were as nice as the place where my grandmother was fortunate enough to reside, but the vast, vast majority were not. The worst were the private “care homes” where they stacked residents in as densely as the law would allow to maximize revenue. It was a common under-the-breath refrain from my fellow firefighters whenever we entered one of those less-than-stellar places: If you ever find me wasting away in here … *insert comment about a pillow and/or intentional overdose on really powerful drugs.*

But where else are elderly, infirm people with little means (and perhaps no family) to go? Not to the kind of place with its own hair salon, probably. It’s fair to say my grandmother was very lucky in this regard.

But as she sat waiting her turn for a new do, she watched an elderly resident who was getting her tips frosted (or whatever) doze off. And then begin drooling.

In that moment, my grandmother saw her future. And she soundly rejected it.

She told my mother: I’m done. I’m going to stop eating.

My mother asked: Are you sure this is what you want?

Yes.

You’re certain?

Yes.

OK. We’ll bring you home.

It was going to take the better part of a day to make this happen (get a hospital bed delivered, arrange transport, etc.) and during that time, word got out about the choice my grandmother had made. Naturally, there was much hand-wringing and pearl-clutching among the staff.

This occurred a little over 20 years ago.

At that time, only one state in the U.S. (Oregon) had enacted any kind of “medical aid in dying” provision, where – under qualifying circumstances – a person gets to be in charge of the last truly consequential decision anyone will ever make regarding their own life.

In Arizona no such option existed (and still doesn’t).

But if a person can tell you four specific things – their name, where they are, the approximate time, and the events of the last several minutes – they are considered to be of sound enough mind to make their own medical decisions.

Person. Place. Time. Event.

And my grandmother – her mind still sharp – could accurately relay all that information.

Anyone able to do so can’t have, say, a feeding tube forced on them against their will, unless they are first placed on a 72-hour psychiatric hold for engaging in potential “self-harm.” But this requires getting law enforcement involved, having the person removed to some sort of lock-down facility, it’s a whole thing.

Especially if that person is a 93-year-old confined to a wheelchair.

The staff wasn’t prepared to do that. What they were willing to try, was a little sleight-of-hand: When my grandmother woke up from a nap, they quickly wheeled her into the dining room. At this point she hadn’t had anything to eat or drink for many hours, and was still groggy from sleep. She ate three slices of orange before she suddenly remembered what she was doing and shouted, “Wait a minute, I’m starving myself to death! Get me the hell out of here!”

(Later my grandmother would laugh as she relayed the story to my mom. Although she did admit: those oranges tasted reeeeally good.)

She also had friends at the facility, and when they heard they were shocked and horrified and many of them came to speak with her. And the peace she’d clearly made with her choice set them at ease. They arrived horrified. They left laughing and joyous. Such was the power of my grandmother’s resolve.

When everything was in place, she was transported to my mother’s home, made comfortable in a hospital bed, and the deathwatch began.

During my career I saw plenty of death. But if Death (capital “D”) is to be metaphorically perceived as this grinning skull in the cloak with the scythe (aesthetically evil, if otherwise just some guy doing his job) gleefully stalking you to come steal your life away, it’s not the moment of you dying that floats his boat.

Oh no.

Death is the lingering. Death is the suffering. Death is the agony of family members watching their loved one very slowly waste away, wishing on some level the person could just die already, but feeling guilty and horrible for even thinking that, while the dying person is likely wishing the same.

Death is the indignity of it all.

This is the Death that stalked the halls of the convalescent hospitals and care homes where we ran endless medical calls, the less-than-stellar places where they packed ’em in and the suffering was palpable, and we always made that vow about using a pillow if it ever came down to it. My grandmother was so fortunate to not have ended up somewhere like that.

But lingering is lingering, no matter how great the view from your apartment.

She lasted two days at my mom’s house, the discomfort of her body’s systems shutting down tempered by duly prescribed pain meds. She died peacefully in the night.

Everybody dies. But if you’re lucky (and brave) you can cheat Death. My grandmother did.

To be spared the long, drawn-out misery was a gift. A gift for everyone, most of all to herself.

There’s a feeling I get when I think of how my grandmother died, an almost sublime emotion I’d never felt before. My mother feels it too, and she was able to define it: Sadness without regret.

My uncle recounts the moment my grandmother left the facility to go to my mom’s house, wheeled onto the lift of the transport van for her final ride. As the lift began to rise, she raised her arms above her head with a big smile on her face. It was the smile of someone about to escape the prison of her 93-year-old body – a person who managed to perform an end-run around the Reaper. 

She met up with him on the goal line of course, as we all eventually will.

But that meeting was on her terms. She called the plays to the very end.

I can only aspire to the same courage when my time comes.

Daniel DeLong is a retired firefighter who strongly believes every human should have the legal right to end-of-life autonomy. If you feel the same, he encourages you to visit Death with Dignity. He has every intention of cheating Death just like his grandmother did.