Planning for grief

Rather than slip away gradually into death as a different person, a woman with Alzheimer’s disease decided to commit suicide while she was still herself. Planning for her death may have helped her family with their grief.

And even though Emily Bem had supported her mother’s decision, this date — the cold reality of it — was very hard to accept.

“I said she seemed too well and it seemed too soon. I felt really angry. I felt they were all wrong,” Emily says.

And so to ease the process for their daughter and their friends, Sandy and Daryl announced that the Sunday before, everyone would gather to honor Sandy.

“We thought that would be a nice thing,” says Daryl Bem. “It made a lot more sense than a funeral where she wouldn’t be.”

On that Sunday, family and friends sat on the white couch in the living room to talk about Sandy’s life, much of which, according to Emily, Sandy had by that point forgotten.

“She just listened and listened and listened, and at the end she would say, ‘Wow, I did that? Amazing. Amazing!’ “

Emily says when she showed up at the meeting she was still very angry, convinced that her mother should hold on. Emily, who also lives in Ithaca, has a toddler. She wanted more time with her mother. But over the course of the meeting, this feeling began to ebb.

(via @scottlamb)

• death