Hope

Hope - to feel that something desired may happen.


After watching Barbara Walters interview Patrick Swayze shortly before his death I heard him say something that really opened a can of worms for me. This concept of hope. It feels like sometimes that's all we really have, after all we aren't in control so it seems to me that hope would be the next thing on the list after control. It's something we do have and it is such a powerful thing. Sometimes hope is so strong that it blocks out all reality. 


This is mom or Grandma Betty, as the kids know her. We had hope until the moment she died. In reflection I know that there was little hope she would survive, should we have abandoned all hope? Would that be like giving up on someone, especially when they themselves don't voice that they have given up hope. I know she had given up on beating cancer long before she died, I think she let us hold onto the hope simply because she couldn't take that away from us, it was all we had left. 

In the Swayze interview he was reflecting on the media reports of his imminent death and how they affected him and his family and he said they angered him because they took hope from his family. I was struck by what he didn't say which was how they took hope from him, or did they or does the person dying have hope or is that something for the loved ones and does the person dying hear something different then everyone else? I hope I'm never in a position to find out but it makes me wonder and wish that I had been more attuned to what was going on when mom was dying. Would the questions I asked have been different if I had no hope that she would make it? Did the hope blind me from a reality and keep me from asking those questions and making that connection that I want now? Isn't she beautiful.