[shadowgovt]

My family is in a similar boat, and I'm glad for this article because I think people who are shouldering this work don't feel like they have societal licensure to talk about how it is difficult work.

Death, no matter how far we advance medicine or technology or scientific understanding, is ugly. People don't want public conversations about the emotions caregivers wrestle with, I think, because they don't want to acknowledge how much of the labor is fending off the inevitable or how one feels guilty for not literally preventing the impossible. "She could have had one more day if only I" is real guilt. I spoke to a therapist about this, and her advice to me was that that is the first thing in my journey that I needed to come to terms with... But she couldn't hand me an answer because everybody finds their own answer to that issue.

I think Western moral and societal philosophy encourages us to seek our own answer to that issue, but it does a damn poor job of giving us tools to find it or even warning us that it's coming until it's staring us in the face.

I can't kill death so I can't fix it. I can empathize with you and tell you you're not alone in the struggle, for what that is worth.