“Sometimes you will never know the value of a moment until it becomes a memory” -Dr. Suess*

Two losses in two days.

by dave shafer/via flickr

Recently, I experienced two unexpected deaths within the span of two days. The first was the passing was of our family’s first dog, who lived with us for 15 years. She was a healthy dog, but suffered from a stroke three days before her death, which disabled her from walking or standing up on her own.

She had symptoms of a suspected brain tumor for months, but she suffered the most during the last three days. Since she was not able to stand up or eat solid food, our family made the difficult decision to relieve our girl from her pain and say goodbye to our dog.

During the same time, my 75-year-old mother, who battled lung cancer for 12 years, went to the emergency department for pain on her right side. Once arriving at the ED, she was prescribed antibiotics to manage her symptoms and then discharged from the hospital. Although she seemed better for a time after returning home, her pain suddenly became unmanageable and she returned to the hospital, where she was transferred to the ICU and passed away three days later.

A mother’s resilience through the years.

When my mother was first diagnosed with lung cancer 12 years ago, the doctor predicted she only had six months left to live. However, her perseverance enabled her to live far longer than was expected. We knew that she was resilient and were hoping that she would be able to overcome this crisis as well.

Although our family had been expecting her death for a long time, her passing still felt so sudden to me. The last time I talked to my mother was over the phone (she lived in South Korea) before she was transferred to the ICU. She talked more than usual and kept saying how grateful she felt in her later years in life.

She had lost her mother when she was born and her father when she was 11 years old. Growing up in the post–Korean War era and as a single mother, my mother learned to be tough as she persevered in making the lives of my siblings and myself the best they could be. Even though she had many hardships of her own, she told my siblings and me, “I know it was not easy, and even though you did not have to, you took good care of your sick mother for a long time.”

I did not realize that would be the last time I heard her voice.

Two messages in dreams.

My dog and mother both appeared to me in my dreams before their passing. The day before my dog’s death, she appeared in my dream and spoke to me in Korean, saying, “I had a pleasant stay here. Thank you.”

Since I speak Korean and English with my children, I often spoke to my dog in both languages as well. We
believed that she understood words in both languages, and though we were limited in fully communicating with her, we always believed that we understood her and that she understood us. Hearing these words from her were special to me and gave me comfort during her passing.

Two days before my mother passed, she came into my dream and said, “Thank you, Hyunjin” (my Korean name) three times. I woke up after the dream because it was so vivid to me; it felt like she was sitting right next to me. When the doctors confirmed that her kidneys and heart were failing as she lay unconscious in the ICU, I knew it is time to say goodbye to my mother. I was with her via FaceTime video as she breathed her last breath.

Contemplating our future last words.

These times of hardship and death have been a time of reflection for me. They have made me question myself about what I want my last words to my loved ones to be. I do not want to tell them that I am sorry, or talk about my regrets, but I want to remember the memories that I am thankful for instead. Yet in the course of these deaths, a sense of regret crept over me as I thought about the things that I felt like I should have done for them. It was hard to focus on the good memories in my regret at their absence.

But the more I reflected, the more I realized that life should not be about regret but about thankfulness. Both my dog and my mother were able to live longer lives than were projected for them; my dog outlived the predicted lifespan for her breed and my mother defeated her lung cancer for many years. I have learned that it’s best to focus on the happy moments now and live this life with a heart that’s grateful to my loved ones—and to be able say to my loved ones someday: “I had a pleasant stay here, thank you.”

By Maria Cho, PhD, RN, FNP-BC, associate professor, assistant director of undergraduate nursing, Hayward Campus, California State University, East Bay, Department of Nursing, Hayward, CA.

(*The Wikiquote page for Dr. Suess suggests that this wise quote was originally a translation of a quote by a French writer, Georges Duhamel, though it has long been misattributed to Dr. Suess.)