Finding Forgiveness

Pencil Case | 22foramoment.wixsite.com/every-day
Feb 14, 2021
4 min read

Updated: May 1, 2021

30 years ago aunt Heidi was diagnosed with stage 3 breast cancer. Mom accompanied her for treatment in Singapore some half a year, staying at their sister’s apartment.

Cancer cells never really go away

I was told that breast cancer cells never really go away - they are just “controlled”. For 20 years aunt Heidi’s cancer seemed to be “controlled” and went about life as normal. Each morning she went for her tai-chi exercises at the public park religiously, and ate moderately.

In 2016, after progressively experiencing pains in her back and motoric issues on her left leg, in the past few years due to metastasis of her breast cancer, her oncologist said that he really didn’t have any different kind of drugs for her anymore, unless she chose to do intravenous chemotherapy again.

But the family could not accept that there was nothing more to do to cure her and continued to ask the doctor to prescribe something for her. She continued to take prescribed drugs.

She was 73 then. No one, especially aunt Heidi, considered IV chemotherapy. She said, never again could she endure chemo.

Going downhill

Aunt Heidi’s condition, as we all silently, fearfully expected, went downhill steadily.

Aunt Heidi was unmarried and lived with her unmarried brother, Lennon. Aunt Heidi’s impatient, practical, perfectionist personality contrasted sharply with his passive, calm, absent-minded demeanor, so it was no surprise that the two were not the most buddy-housemates.

Still, Uncle Lennon heart was gold, and was always present and ready to serve and care for his sister’s condition. She couldn’t have asked for a kinder, more loyal brother.

I remember visiting her one afternoon in December 2017.

She no longer had the strength to sit herself up from bed. She said she has been using the motion of her bent legs to rock herself up. Her hands had gone dark, her lips were dry and cracked, her feet were swollen, effects of the drugs prescribed to her, which her body could no longer sustain. She was not able to eat, and was taken to hospital.

Luckily, after being on the drip for a week, she regained strength and was discharged.

Stopping curative treatment

Aunt Heidi wanted to stop curative treatment as she could no longer tolerate the effects it had on her body. But not all her siblings were supportive.

In the end, after a family meeting (or sibling meeting rather), it was decided that all would respect Aunt Heidi’s decision to stop curative treatment.

During the course of 2018 Aunt Heidi made small recoveries but overall her condition continued to deteriorate.

Yet, her days were still marked by her favorite foods we brought her, family visits and bantering with her sisters.

I am grateful that she had a whole year to enjoy some of the little things that gave her some delight, and a better quality of life, than merely sleeping, and resting in a hospital bed, with all sorts of tubes plugged to her, for the remaining of her days.

Hospitalization

In December 2018 Aunt Heidi was hospitalized as she continued to weaken and was completely bedridden.

By then it was a strain for her to speak, and she rarely spoke again. A very competent helper had been engaged to stay with her at the hospital.

On one Sunday morning, when I visited her, and it was just the two of us, she looked me in the eye and said “I can’t take it anymore”.

Do Not Resuscitate (DNR)

Indonesia’s interpretation of a DNR statement is more often given to the patient's family members rather than the patient, to sign.

The dreaded time came when the doctor informed that aunt Heidi would need to rely on the feeding tube and oxygen to survive.

The siblings were split - those that supported a natural course, and those that wanted to maintain a feeding tube to prolong her life, regardless of the consequences to her frail body.

The brothers decided to sustain aunt Heidi on the feeding tube. In addition, oral suction to remove phlegm had to be regularly performed on her to ease breathing.

Aunt’s Heidi’s painful frown showed it was such an ordeal for her.

As the doctor informed us of her days that were drawing close, we prayed for and with her.

In the dawn of April 2019, she passed peacefully with no family members beside her - the way she had wanted to go.

Aftermath

Determining the care and medical instructions in aunt Heidi’s final days had driven a piercing wedge between Uncle Lennon who was a staunch Buddhist, very much pro-life, and mom, who was confident aunt Heidi wanted to go naturally, based on her past conversations with her.

Uncle Lennon described mom as “inhuman”, and she was deeply hurt.

They have not spoken since.

Pro-life or pro-choice, I am sure that neither aunt Heidi, nor our late grandma, grandpa would have wanted to see them not on speaking terms.

I wonder if our values and principles about something as important as life and death, especially related to those dearest to us, is something that we can never put aside, to give space for forgiveness?

Forgiveness

I can imagine it is a feat, to say the very least.

But hasn’t time and time and time again, God’s love proven that it can transcend all injustice, hurt, anger and betrayal, if we so ask?

I pray that His unfathomable great love will touch and heal their hearts that were hardened by disappointment, anger and disrespect.

I'm sure forgiveness doesn't come easy, even when we rationally try. So let us surrender and let God rule over our hearts, so that He can perform what is too bitter for us to do ourselves.

For we are all living on borrowed time.

And that backpack of hurt and anger is way too heavy to carry every day.