Important to me.

I listen to quite a few podcasts, in fact when I lost my phone just before Christmas I probably lamented the loss of all the podcasts I listened to on it more than the loss of a mode of contact. It took me us two months to have the spare cash to pick up a cheap phone to hold me over, but this cheap phone is still an Android and I once again have my podcasts back.

On Wednesday I listened to this particular Radiolab episode:

The Bitter End

I wish it had been there around December/January 2011/12. It would have given me some measure of comfort. Last year a very important person in my life died. My grandmother Elizabeth Smith, she was instrumental in me becoming who I am today. She lived with us throughout my life until I moved in with my then girlfriend and now wife. My mother was quite ill when I was a baby and my father was in the army in different part of the country until we moved to said area when I was just one year old. So my grandmother did a lot of looking after me when I was a baby, when I was colic-y and screaming, when my mother wasn't able to carry me due to a gallbladder problem. I developed a very deep bond with her.

My earliest memory in fact is of helping her to lay down a tablecloth across the kitchen table in one of our old houses. My childhood was spent in her small flat that was attached to the main house, watching old war movies or cartoons with her while I played with Lego on her floor. She was a wonderful, kind and caring woman, who spent time as a mental health nurse, ran a nursing home and eventually helped in raising me. To say that I love her doesn't do it justice.

January of last year she passed away as a result of, well now that I think about it I can't make the exact details of her passing stick, my brain slides around the subject still. What is concrete in my head is that it was slow, around the time I hit university, maybe a couple of years in, she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, she later developed Parkinson's, she eventually began to lose the power to swallow and while she remembered a lot towards the end one of the worst experiences of my life was a day when she could not remember who I was at all, confusing me with her own son John. It very nearly killed me. As a result of losing the power to swallow she landed up being fed by something called a PEG feeding tube. Eventually she asked that she no longer be kept alive this way. She passed away a couple of weeks later maybe, having spent an afternoon with my children, my wife, some of my cousins and my mother & aunt. A last family get together in the hospital room that I missed due to work, she wasn't completely aware I'm told.

At the time that she was taken off the PEG feeding I was so conflicted, it ended up being my mother's decision and she asked my opinion on the matter. I knew my Nan wanted to have it end but this way seemed cruel somehow. If I had heard that particular podcast at the time I feel the decision would have been, not easier, but maybe less conflicting? I'm not sure. This is still hard for me to think about. Writing it down is worse. I think there is a case here for quality of life versus prolonging the mechanical act of living. My point I guess is that this podcast in particular has offered me a little bit of comfort, maybe that's not the right word either. Anyway, I urge you to listen to it.

It's got something important to say.