Adapted from an online discussion.
Dear Carolyn: My aunt died a couple of weeks ago. It was a bit of a surprise to the family. We knew something was up, because she wasn’t as responsive as she usually was, and her sister wasn’t able to talk to her as much as they used to. Turns out my aunt had been battling cancer. She was diagnosed back in 2017 and after some treatment was cancer-free, but a few months later, it came back. She tried fighting it again but decided to stop.
The thing is, she kept all of this a secret from the family. Even after my mother died in June, her husband tried to get her to tell the family what was going on, but she refused.
She lived so far from the rest of the family that I didn’t get to see her much. The last time I saw her was when she came to help out when my dad, her brother, died in 2013. I feel like I was robbed of an opportunity to see her once more.
I guess I just don’t understand why she kept this to herself when she knew what was coming.
— Didn’t Get to Say Goodbye
Didn’t Get to Say Goodbye: I’m sorry you didn’t have a goodbye visit.
Those visits are typically what people are trying to avoid when they keep their conditions secret, though. It’s not necessarily a personal rejection of their loved ones, so please don’t think your aunt was avoiding you specifically or her family in general. In my experience, it’s the goodbye scene that the terminally ill are rejecting.
It’s not just illness, either. Many people go out of their way not to be the center of attention, period. There are brides who dread aisles, birthday honorees who dread their own parties, sufferers who conceal their pain for fear of mobilizing a help army, patients who deflect bedside displays of concern. True story: My mother, in hospice, referred to her imminent death as “the drama” and urged her kids not to come.
This impulse to keep others at arm’s length doesn’t exist in a vacuum, obviously; it affects the people being kept at bay, too. For people who want to be present, there’s a sense of loss on top of a loss. But when it comes down to it, people who know they are near death — especially after a long illness — are often desperate for some say in their own lives, and going out on their terms can be the one lever they have left to pull.
So I hope the outcome can offer some consolation: that your aunt apparently wanted to slip away without a fuss, and did exactly that.
Re: Goodbye: The other thing is, dying can be hard work — physically, emotionally, mentally, in every way possible — and the dying need to figure out what works best for them. It might have been too much for your aunt to bear, and she had the right to figure out what worked best for her in the midst of that very difficult process. I don’t think it had anything to do with her love for her family, and please try to let go of the idea that it did.
— Anonymous
Anonymous: This is beautiful and heartbreaking, thank you.
Re: Goodbye: On the other hand, if you are dying, take the time to say goodbye to your non-adult children. No matter how hard it is. Because if you don’t, then you leave the kids with permanent unfinished stuff.
