The grotto at Our Lady’s Hospice, Harold’s Cross, Dublin

A dying parent.

The returning emigrant son.

And end-of-life care In Ireland.

Ken writes:

I currently reside in the US, where I teach college full time. In recent weeks I have returned to Dublin to be with my sick Mother. She has cancer and is currently dying. How long she has is unknown, but we have been made aware that time is short, perhaps months, but some days it seems like she could go any time.

I am writing because I find myself appalled at the lack of end-of-life care in this country. This is my first experience of an up-close and personal family death.

I came with a view to spending a few weeks with my mother, to offer comfort and support and lend a hand where needs be. I now find myself as primary care-giver, at home, with no end in sight, unable to return to my family in the US because there is nowhere for my mother to go.

I have brothers here, and they are very good in terms of offering time, but both have commitments that preclude them from being here full-time, 24/7, which is currently what my mother needs.

She is not eating, barely drinking, and needs assistance with all the most basic and mundane daily tasks. I am not trained for this kind of care, and there are issues of dignity that one finds very difficult to over-come. I feel like I am alone and the system, whatever exists of it, has left us to our own devices.

My mother has experienced some brief periods of respite at Our Ladies Hospice at Harold’s Cross, and her current palliative team visit and do their best, as far as know, but all the emphasis is on taking pills that seem to have little positive effect on a dying person.

There appears to be no concern for the fact that a woman has been left to die in her bed with a son who is shell-shocked not entirely equipped to handle the enormity of the situation.

My father is at home also, but he is eighty two years old, and physically and emotionally unable to be of much assistance.

Today I asked the visiting nurse what the picture would be had I not been here, would an eighty two year old man be expected to deal with all the things I currently have to deal with?

The response was a shrug of the shoulders and some reference to cuts and the economy. Now that banks have all our money, it seems there is nothing left for the dying. We have literally been bled to death. I can’t imagine things having been that much different, one hundred years ago.

As things stand, I feel enormously relieved that I no longer live in the ‘progressive’ Ireland of 2015. This however, is no comfort in the short term.

Pic: OLH