When our loved ones die, withhold judgment...for your sake and theirs.

Sunday, June 1st, 2025

Today, I stumbled upon a friend’s Facebook Post. She’s working in elder care, and she was venting about her deep distress. She’s struggling with clients who whine and complain about their collapsing state of health while — at the same time — sucking down their pills with Coke before reaching for their insulin, or otherwise making highly salty snacks, endless sweets, and junk food the main course of most meals.

For her sake, I stopped what I was doing (another Substack, which I’ve now pushed out until tomorrow) and wrote the following comment. As she posted publicly on her Facebook account, and as I also responded publicly there, I’ve left her name in.

For all the people currently giving end of life care to a loved one, or a client, I wish this level of ease and perspective for you and yours.

Oh Eryn. Honey. You need to stop doing this to yourself. I'm going to call you on this, because I truly want you to be much happier in your current chosen profession.

When my Mom was diagnosed with mouth cancer, she chose to come home (thank goodness) to be with us before she passed. She'd lived with us off and on since her divorce when she was 54, and my kids and her were pretty darn close.

My Mom ate generally healthier than me, in some ways. Daily salads when I'd be surviving on coffee and chocolate (LOL), but she did have a sweet tooth, she liked salty chips (she and I both have super low blood pressure naturally and it might be linked to that condition), and coffee was her friend.

Right now, I'm tearing up. I really, really miss her. Anyway...

When she came home, I knew she had refused the allopathic offer for endless surgeries because her condition was known to be terminal and generally death aligned with the ending of a 5-year series of surgeries. She didn't want five more years of pain, disfigurement, and endless medical procedures with the likely loss of speech and probably a struggle to eat easily. I got it, I supported her (when most doctors didn't), and she eventually passed after 2.5 months of as much joy as I've ever seen a person experience while slowly starving to death.

Along the way, as eating became harder and harder, she wanted chocolate yogurt, pudding, tapioca, cooled down and sweetened coffee, ice cream, the works! She even managed to eat some salty chips, when she was freshly into a round of pain relievers.

My oldest son struggled with her food choices. He wisely knew she could potentially improve her condition, who knows -- maybe even reverse it? -- if she were to go on a super healthy diet. You know, kale smoothies, zero sugar, no dairy, lots of raw foods, and so on.

And I, in my wisdom as a 50 year old woman, knew to offer this but not demand it. Not pressure for it. Not even judge it as the better choice. Why? Because it was my mother's choice of how to live her life. And so it is for your clients.

If you are bothered because your clients are WHINING, that's one thing. But, it sounds like you are also caught up in your own personal judgment of their choices and that you are affronted that they would "abuse their body and then have the audacity to whine about the results."

(1) Yes, you have a right to be annoyed by whining. But that's true whether the person is a pure victim or a self-inflicted victim.

If you would be LESS bothered by a 27 year old health nut who was suffering from a rare cancer that you believe they had no role is causing, then your annoyance with your elderly clients IS ON YOU.

Does that make sense? My son was bothered by my Mom's food decisions during her dying months. He never pushed it on her (but he questioned my support of her food choices and explored whether we could influence her to eat better).

Me? Once I understood my Mom's choice, I went out of my way to find anything and everything soft and delicious that she would/could eat comfortably and happily.

In fact, after she passed, it was excruciatingly painful to pass by the pudding, ice cream, and yogurt sections of the grocery store, because I used to walk the aisles, DESPERATE for something my Mom could eat...that's a memory I haven't had in awhile, and it still hurts, remembering my powerlessness to find something she could eat without pain.

Can you imagine? Walking the aisles of a well-stocked grocery store, going in circles, searching and searching and unable to find anything your mother can eat? Sigh.

(2) It's the right of every person to decide when and how to live (and die).

My Dad developed cancer, kept it quiet, enjoyed his life for a few more months until he was at risk of collapsing at home and waking up in a hospital attached to tubes and no longer in control of his life -- then he sent an email to my youngest brother and, right after he sent it, he went out to an open field and shot himself in the head.

Thank God he succeeded, dying instantly.

That was his right, just as it is your client’s right to gobble a candy bar while his or her feet are rotting as a symptom of Type 2 Diabetes. Similarly, some people choose to enjoy the perceived pleasure they derive from smoking a cigarette through a hole cut into their neck as throat cancer brings their life to an end.

In the end, that's them doing them.

You, Eryn, and I are both extremely committed to a society that allows people to decide for themselves what to value and how to live. Right?

SO -- WHY DO YOU CARE? In the span of Earth's existence, our lives are invisibly brief and what exactly are your clients supposed to achieve or do on this planet over the next few months or years before they inevitably die anyway?

I'M SAYING THE DISTRESS ORIGINATES WITHIN YOURSELF.

For example, when a person accuses us of doing something bad that we DID DO, and we feel guilt, why is that? It's because we, ourselves, are already ashamed or bothered by what we've done, and that person is pointing it out. BUT, if we DID NOT do something bad, and we are unjustly accused, we do not feel guilt, because there's nothing to be guilty about. We might be worried others will believe the false accusation, but guilt? We will not feel that, BECAUSE guilt comes from within.

No one else can make us feel guilty unless we review our own behavior and agree with them that, yes, I should feel guilty for that. See what I mean?

Similarly, it's ON YOU to come to terms with another’s method of death.

If you're going to do this kind of work, you've got to STOP valuing "more time" so greatly that you're bothered by those who are shortening their life span through their own behavior. Otherwise, you'll be endlessly distressed BECAUSE WE ALL DO THIS.

YOU are also shortening your life by your choices.

• YOU feel stress and anger which is harmful.

• YOU may not get enough sleep, from time to time.

• YOU might eat a candy bar or drink a cup of coffee or have that glass of champagne on New Year's Eve.

• YOU drive a car.

• YOU use a cell phone.

• YOU live near a city and breathe smog.

YOU ... the list goes on.

Last week, I went on a glorious hike through the mountains outside of Hanao Village in Andong South Korea, breathing pure, clean, fresh air as I walked along for hours in nature...and gosh golly, I forgot my sunscreen that morning and burned my nose and cheeks. I'm not peeling yet, but did I just increase my risk of terminal skin cancer? Maybe! Would my dermatologist be made at me? Probably, as I've already had one "almost skin cancer" removed from the back of my left thigh and I'm super blond and white (despite being 1/4 Cheyenne/Cherokee)...

And, well…

That's life on this radiated, dangerous, violent, out to kill us planet -- which also includes a bunch of new, man-made causes of death, right?

SO, LET IT GO, ERYN.

You’re too awesome to be slowed down or bothered by this, especially if you wish to work in this field. I’ve personally supported three people during their final months and death. I’ve sat and held their hands, stared into their eyes, fed them during their last few days or months, and I know I played a distinctly important role in that I brought zero judgment. I could see the ease in their dimming eyes, as they felt fully accepted and loved by me.

That is the gift you are positioned to offer, and I know your heart is there. So, don’t let the pain of witnessing their end of life challenges interfere, okay?

Death, and even self-inflicted suffering, is part of the journey. It just is. Give yourself permission to be okay with it — okay? For your sake, Eryn.

And yes, if they're whining, that's just obnoxious behavior. Set limits, protect yourself, don't tolerate abuse, but otherwise -- LET. IT. GO.

With love,
March