Doris

Doris Whitworth died Wednesday, April 8, 2009, in a Sun City West hospice where she had had herself admitted last Friday seeing it as a means to a quick, painless death. Almost within hours of arriving there she found the place not to her liking and wanted to go home. They had no hangers. They couldn't ease her suffering or eliminate the grasping fear that at any moment she would be unable to breathe despite the oxygen tank to which she was tethered.
"This is no way to live,'' Doris said on Saturday afternoon, propped up on a pillow irked that her mouth was dry and that there was no close caption on the TV in her room. Her eye lids were half-closed b ut her keen, restless mind raced from one concern to the next immune to the sedative. Suspicious of any God in control, nearly deaf and displeased with the decision she'd made to put herself in hospice, Doris fought to direct her life. Finding hangers for her clothes, house keys and something to quench her thirst consumed her in those last lucid moments.
Doris was one of my husband's clients and the last one he would tend. Having outlived her three husbands, she kept careful control of her life from her two-bedroom home in Sun City where she had pretty much isolated herself for the last few years. A certified public accountant, Doris was a careful, meticulous, fearful woman who, like most of us, was full of contradictions. She was generous. (She gave us three of her time shares.) Secretive. Fearful. Easy to anger, especially toward the end, and equally as easy to forgive. She was suspicious of strangers, fearful of the energy they would extract in training them to her ways and her conviction that they would surely fall short. Nearly always she was surprised when circumstances would force her to accept a new person into her life. This was especially true for the three women who wound up caring for her in the end. Within minutes of meeting each of them, she shed all concern, although not her demand for having everything as she wanted it.
Tiffany was the first of the three to enter Doris' life. She had been with her since Doris' first hospital bout. Initially, Doris saw Tiffany as the daughter she never had. She was an angel whose presence allowed Doris to return to her home after she fell. But Tiffany's youth, Doris' age and nature and their combined emotional immaturity frequently poisoned the relationship. But still Tiffany remained. Two other women were added as Doris' inability to remain alone in her home over periods of time waned.
Throughout her time with Doris, Tiffany was confident that Doris would accept a God she dismissed as unable to meet her expectations or needs. Tiffany told Doris all she had to say was I believe. But surrender was against Doris' instincts. She banished the hospital chaplain from her room days before she opted for hospice care. Initially, the women resisted Doris' decision to have herself moved to hospice. Accustomed to carrying out her orders, they would have executed her desire to go home. But Doris' failing health and her own unreined fear kept her sedated and dying.
Tiffany was at Doris' bedside Wednesday morning when she breathed her last breath. Tiffany was praying. I think she prayed Doris' way into peace and in doing that found more of her own.
Doris' life and death are cautionary, instructive tales. Mostly of God's generous, porous grace able to breach even our most hardened will to control.