On Monday, November 21, 2011, my mother-in-law, Kathy, passed away. Her husband, daughters, son-in-law, a sister-in-law, and a niece encircled her bed in the hospital room. A window looked out to the mountain she liked to walk on. She didn’t see it that day.
Kathy was brought into the hospital emergency room on the evening of November 11, 2011. She had dangerously low blood pressure and high heart and respiration rates. For the next ten days she lay hooked up to IVs, and monitors for her heart, respiration, blood pressure, and oxygen levels in various hospital beds. After being admitted to the hospital, she quickly lost her appetite and after a couple days would not eat food. Nurses cared for her; doctors sought the cause of her illness and treated its symptoms; and family members kept her company, implored her to eat and drink so she could regain her strength, and did whatever they could for her.
The day before she died, a feeding tube was inserted through her nose and into her stomach to give her body the nourishment it needed to fight the mysterious illness taking her life away. By this time, her eyes were swollen shut, her face and arms puffy from fluids seeping out of her veins and into her spaces around her organs. Her voice had fallen past whispers and into silence. During her last night, a kidney specialist determined her kidneys were shutting down and she needed dialysis to survive. The next morning, Kathy shook her head, “No!” when her husband asked if she wanted to go through the procedure.
Prior to her coming to the hospital, we all thought Kathy would live for several more years. True, she was a couple weeks into her 81st year, and she had Alzheimer’s, but she was still able to walk and prepare a simple meal for herself. By Monday morning, November 21, however, the death that at first seemed years away, quickly shifted from days to just hours distant as her organs cascaded toward failure. At noon she was wheeled out of ICU and its noise into a peaceful room. Family members gathered around, held her, and stood watch over her dying body. At 1:25 her breathing became raspy, would pause for several seconds, and restart with a gasp. Over the next ten minutes the pauses got longer. Then her breath stopped and there was no gasp. Her husband felt the pulse in her neck slowly weaken and then felt it no more.
Kathy’s immediate family spent that afternoon looking at family pictures. We saw how she looked before she gave birth to her two daughters and when her daughters were young children. We wanted to remember the good times and replace the memory of how she looked on her death bed with how she looked as a young woman.
Why am I writing all this here? Because the length of life that my mother-in-law had and the care she received in a modern hospital well stocked with many doctors, nurses, support staff, medical supplies, and equipment stand in stark contrast to the shortness of life and medical care available to the world’s poorest.
For almost 20 years I’ve lobbied Congress for legislation and funding that would help improve their lives. I don’t expect the poorest in the world to have the same level of medical care my mother-in-law had. I don’t expect my nation’s government to fully fund their health care.
What I do expect, though, is for my nation’s government to help the citizens of other countries realize the Rights of Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness our Founding Fathers’ declared as inalienable in our Declaration of Independence. For too many people in the world, their Right to Life is “protected” by a rickety bicycle and trailer ambulance; a tiny hospital with a few bandages, a volunteer doctor, maybe a trained nurse, a few beds with each sometimes crowded with multiple people; and little else.
Life is not fair. That is true. But, that truth is not an excuse for why we in the U.S. cannot demand our government chip in a little more money to help make life a little less unfair to the poorest in the world. As a percentage of GDP, we lag behind other developed nations in foreign development aid.* Why do we have to accept Fate’s choice of where a girl is born to largely determine whether she’ll survive to become a woman, survive childbirth, and survive to see her children marry and have families of their own?
I’d often ask Kathy how she was doing? She’d always pause, grin , and say, “Oh, I guess I’ll live.” She never wanted to celebrate her birthdays, but I know that even after we made her join us in celebrating her 81st birthday she wanted more life.
There are many things I would prefer doing over lobbying on behalf of the poorest. But I see those born in rural villages and city slums too poor to have even basic medical care. And I see the broken promises and wasted spending in my own government. And I know that my advocacy can and has helped those least able to help themselves.
So I share the story of Kathy, the mother of my cherished wife, in the hope that readers will be inspired to join RESULTS or similar organizations and help other mothers live long enough to see their daughters marry and be happy. To help make the unfairness of Life a little less unfair.
* For more debate on the level of U.S. foreign aid, see The Stingy Attack and The World’s Most Generous Misers.
A very moving tribute to Mr. Drigger’s mother-in-law! Mr. Driggers’ writing ability is such that I felt the empathy and pain and sorrow of losing a loved one, even to old age. There is, however, an answer to Mr. Driggers’ question: “Why do we have to accept Fate’s choice of where a girl is born to largely determine whether she’ll survive to become a woman, survive childbirth, and survive to see her children marry and have families of their own?”
My response to Mr. Drigger’s touching tribute to his mother-in-law precludes me from answering his very rational and intellectually challenging question, especially in the amount of space alloted; however, for those who desire the answer, please feel free to contact me at [email protected] (if Mr. Driggers permits such solicitation on his blog.)
The primary point that I wanted to make, though, is that Mr. Driggers, for those who do not know him personally, is a warm, honest, and truly concerned citizen who involves himself in trying to right social injustices. For that, I truly admire Mr. Driggers.