The death you imagine
Odds are, you won’t get it. Maybe a small percentage.
If you’ve seen the same movies I have, the soon-to-depart are at home in their comfortable, white linen beds, surrounded by family, the light perfect through the window, their face in a beatific glow, a sublime peace for a life well lived, ready for whatever’s next.
I’m not a professional in this world, but I am at the age where friends and family have navigated this road, and spent endless hours in (US) assisted living facilities, observing, listening. The one common theme is that they didn’t think it would be like this.
You will probably be cared for by underpaid strangers who are responsible for 20 or more people at any one time. Turnover is high. You make up stories about them. The caregivers are angels if they talk to you for one extra minute, they resent or hate you if they rush away. The food is too bland or overspiced, the room too hot or too cold, the TV too quiet or too loud. You have pains and discomfort you can’t explain and the meds they give you don’t help. You might be doubled up with a roommate making scary sounds and smells. You control nothing. You are bored and terrified.
Paying more won’t save you. Residents in $10K+ per month facilities have pretty much the same experience, but with higher ceilings, landscaped grounds, two or three meal choices instead of none, maybe a shuttle bus with a logo on it.
What you do get, maybe, are a few good moments. Where you can laugh and genuinely connect with someone amidst the decidedly uncinematic reality you’re living.
Some go quick, the hospice nurse told me. When they’ve decided they’re ready. Some wait to be alone, others when people are with them, telling them it’s okay to let go.
My mom just finished her journey on this road. Two years, give or take, where this independent woman was utterly dependent. Combative, depressed, only in rare moments anything you could call even approximately happy. Almost everything above she experienced. But she did get to pass, as she wanted, with family in the room. That much the universe did allow.