Primary Contact:    Kate Bandos / kate@KSBpromotions.com / (800)304-3269

Note on Terminology and Editing
In our first drafts, we found that the words needed to distinguish among interviewees and their dying loved ones and to describe their interactions in context each time became cumbersome to the reader. So we created the following terms you will see used throughout the book.

• FC-talk: talk or interactions, including nonverbal messages, that occur with the full knowledge that one party to the conversation is dying
• the Living: the interviewees; the person who spoke to us about the final conversation(s) after the death of their loved one; the person who will continue living
• the Dying: the Living’s loved one who was dying
• spiritual message: any message beyond the scientifically observable sort (some of the Living considered such messages to be related to religion or faith; others considered them to be metaphysical phenomena beyond rational explanation)

We use the following conventions to identify the Living and their words: Direct quotes from our interviews always appear in type that looks like this. Most interviewees gave us permission to use their given names; a few asked that we use pseudonyms they chose. When two people had the same first name, we differentiated between the two people by using the letters Q and W after their names. In every case, we place the name in bold letters, for instance, Gloria or Laura W, the first time it appears in a chapter. The quoted words of interviewees have been edited only when necessary for clarity or grammar; nothing was changed in a substantive way.

- - -
Excerpts above and below from Final Conversations: Helping the Living and the Dying Talk to Each Other copyright © 2007 by Maureen P. Keeley, PhD and Julie M. Yingling, PhD, published by VanderWyk & Burnham. All rights reserved.
- - -

Chapter 6

Heartache Released
Healing Damaged Relationships

How do you have FC-talk with someone who has been mean and miserable to you? Why would you even consider inviting FC-talk and making yourself vulnerable again? Why would you want to be kind, considerate, and forgiving to the Dying, if they had never done so for you? The answer is provided by the Living: You do it for you, to survive. Not everyone has a happy, loving, or safe relationship with the Dying—but they’re family. Sometimes, the Living are the only family available for the Dying, so they are expected to visit and possibly become a primary caregiver. And this can be a very uncomfortable duty.

Approximately 20% of the Living we spoke with had very difficult relationships with the Dying. We were fortunate that they were willing to talk to us, given the hurt they had to recall. In some cases, the Living simply faced challenges in a relationship that included both good and bad moments. In others, the Living had terrible relationships with the Dying; they described typical past interactions with the Dying as filled with criticism, defensiveness, guilt, manipulation, coldness, and even contempt.

These Living reported that their FC-talk focused primarily on the goal of “cleaning up” the mess they’d been dealing with for most of their lives. But it’s more complicated than that. The Living look for ways to let go of their anger and resentment before it’s too late. FC-talk offers a way to begin this difficult journey. The process of healing as “cleaning up” includes four areas of concentration:

1. The Living often must release negativity by forgiving and accepting their former nemesis.
   
2. The Living might hope for (but not expect) a surprising apology.
   
3. The Living may find a new kind of relationship with the Dying.
   
4. The Living, in general, did not want to make things worse than they had been prior to the terminal diagnosis.

Whatever the outcome, this special group of the Living were incredibly brave, and trusted that we knew what to do with their stories. We are extremely grateful for the stories they shared. We learned a great deal from them.

Cleaning Up the Mess
Katherine was 46 when she helped Linda, her 80-year-old mother, face death. For most of her life, she and Linda had not had a good relationship. Katherine had waited and waited for Linda to be the mother she wanted, the mother she hoped for. But she learned that as people near death, they rarely change. As they approach death, the Dying usually act as they have acted every day prior to their terminal diagnosis. We all become limited by our daily routines, our habitual ways of responding and communicating. As we near death, we know no other way to be. With this realization, Katherine came to see that it was going to be her job to clean up their relationship if she had any hope of bringing it to a resolution.

Katherine’s mother, Linda, had been ill for a number of years. Linda first dealt with lymphoma, then with breast cancer and four years of chemotherapy. Finally, it became apparent that her life was slipping away, and Linda was angry and afraid. She continued her tendency to be ornery and difficult, and did not go easily from life. What she would say, how she would say it—she had less governing of it. In her life, she would control it—her sharp tongue and her statements—but as she got more ill, she didn’t, and she just would say whatever she wanted to say. My dad and I tried to keep her at the apartment, keep her at home. At the end, we had her moved into hospice care; when you do that, you know that it’s the end. She was on a lot of morphine. We got a nurse to come in to stay during the nights so that my dad could sleep on the couch. And she refused to let my father have any rest. He had to be with her every second. And if he wasn’t there, it had to be me. And we would go back and forth between really tough love with her, really holding boundaries with her, and then the next minute realizing that this is a dying person: We need to be nice. I had a really hard time getting in her face about stuff and holding the line with her. And she just totally dominated everything.

Katherine felt the intense pull of these conflicting impulses: to hold the line for her own needs, and to be “nice” to her difficult, dying mother. That was very frustrating. I had a lot of anger. I did a lot of talking to friends and processing a lot of my resentment and anger towards her during that time. I think that’s what came out of it for me . . . I cleaned up a lot of my stuff with her by taking care of her during that time when she was as mean as she could be. As difficult as she could be, I became the parent. I parented her through that. She became a little girl emotionally as she went down. And my father was just emotionally a wreck and worn down. And I parented him through that too. And then I would go to school and teach school all day, and go back to the nursing home as soon as I got out of school. I have a friend whose husband is a family counselor, so she’s kind of like an assistant family counselor. She helped me process a whole lot of it. And we would talk and talk and talk and talk, as we both had similar mother-daughter relationships which were not at all warm and fuzzy and best friends. Not at all.

Because Katherine had a negative history with her mother, she had to make a conscious decision about how she wished to say goodbye. I remember saying to myself, “Be here. Don’t check out emotionally.” You know how you just go away emotionally and walk through it, but not feel it? I remember thinking, Be aware of this. Be awake during this. Pay attention.

I would have to say it took me days to get myself ready to tell her that I love her, and that seems like such a weird thing. It probably is just an amazing thing to people who say that all the time before they hang up the telephone. I knew it was my assignment, but it took me weeks of processing and going to the nursing home and not saying it, and going home and thinking, Oh! I didn’t do it. You know? It seemed like this huge thing. It had just so much emotional baggage with it because she had never told me. I would be damned if I’m gonna be the one that reaches out there and does that . . . My friend was encouraging me, of course. And I knew that her days were numbered, and I knew intellectually that I would be so angry if I didn’t get this done and she died. How wasteful. And so I felt a lot of pressure from myself to take care of that and at the same time, so much resistance: not doing it, not going there.

One evening she was just absolutely throwing a fit at when she didn’t get her way. She had no strength, but she could throw her dinner tray across the room. You know? And she had done that, so it was a really high-level emotional situation. She was throwing a fit, and I needed to leave, I needed to get home. And there was just all this guilt and manipulation that she had used all of our lives, only very subtly. You know, I wasn’t really surprised—I mean, this is my mom, I was used to it. I would just dance to the tune. Then this situation is different in that I’m the adult, and she’s pretty much not really in control of herself . . . So I’m wrestling with What do I owe her? Do I stay for her? Do I leave for my kids? Do I stay all night? Do I need more than two hours’ sleep? All that reality-check stuff. That evening, another lady was there, a friend of the family. The two of us were in the room, and I just began to talk to my mother from my emotional place of [acting as the] mom. And I was just listing: We’re doing this, and we’re doing this, and Dad and I’ve discussed how we can do this better. And we want you to feel safe, and we want you to be happy . . . I was just trying to calm her down and list all the things that we were doing to help her. And she was ranting about how nobody loves her . . . And it just laid itself out there. I just said, “Mom, I love you dearly. And I appreciate everything you’ve done for me all of my life.”

My mother had never told me in my whole life that she loved me. Ever. And so I spent that last month reassuring her how much my father and I loved her. It took me a long time to be able to say it. I would say it to my friend Mary, who was helping me process this. I emotionally didn’t want to do any of that; it seemed like this huge, big monster—to go there emotionally with my mother. But what it ended up being was a healing for me. I don’t know what she got out of it. I don’t even know if she was aware of enough. But I got to tell her that I loved her. And I got to thank her for taking care of my children when they were young. And it was really hard for me to do. It was really hard for me to do. To do that for her—to give to her what she had never given me—I didn’t want to do it. But I was kind of forced into this place, and it just seemed like that was my assignment. That was my assignment. There was a strength gained by it; I don’t know how you would get it any other way except mothering a child, I suppose. It’s very similar to that. Hard, you know. And it’s not fun. But that’s what we did.

Katherine . . . decided that during her FC-talk, she had to describe the ways that her mother was being loved. She wanted her mother to recognize and be open to the love in her life; just as Katherine was finally able to start opening herself to love. She began by telling her mother, “You know, there is this parade of people in and out of here, and flower and gifts . . . You are loved, people love you. Don’t you see that?” And she couldn’t see it. She could not receive that. That’s the most powerful message to me because I am her daughter. And I have very similar things happening in my life. I mean, I had been alone, guttin’ it out, doing it all by myself for fifteen years. And she had not been there for me. So that was when I pretty much laid it out there and told her I loved her.

I think I put down the baggage, anger, and resentment towards my mom that I’d been carrying all my life. I didn’t like her very much. Doing for her what I wanted her to do for me cleaned that up. That was the interesting part of that . . . What cleaned it up was that I did it for her.

Katherine, in reversing roles and doing for her mother what her mother never did for her, healed much of the anger and resentment she had stored up from the need for mothering. And she began to perceive a physical component to this role switching. Her big, bad mother became smaller as Katherine expanded into her full adult stature. The first thing that comes to my mind is how small she got. She shrunk, and I got bigger. I probably really didn’t change size. She probably literally changed size. But the first thing that comes to my mind is, I just would be astounded at how small this little lady was, and how fragile she was in this bed. The bed got huger, and she got smaller. And the other weird thing about that was that I was getting stronger, I was getting bigger as she got smaller. Well, that was the strength that I was getting. It was the first time I’d really dealt with her as an adult—not as her daughter, but as an adult.

Katherine felt a sense of achievement and esteem about accomplishing these difficult tasks: I was bigger than she was emotionally. I could do it. I could push through my own fear and do it anyway.

Katherine realized that she had grabbed the opportunity to clean up the mess, while her siblings had not. Everyone in my family, the three children that she had, suffer from very low self-esteem, my brothers especially . . . well, all of us. I took the opportunity to work out some of this stuff, and they did not. They’re old, they’re 63. And they are still beating that old drum of, “My mother didn’t ever da-de-da.” “My parents, my family didn’t ever do this, and that’s why I'm so screwed up.” I can see that. And I’m hoping that I learned and cleaned up and can move on. That’s what I’m hoping: that I’m not just carrying around that trailer full of history of “my family screwed me up.”. . .

Sam described cleaning up the mess in terms of the need for the Living to own their part of the problem and stop the blame game. Sam revealed, My dad was the obvious problem person in the family, but the relationship I had the most trouble with was the relationship with my mother. I think what happened with her in those last couple of years was really some closure . . . I remember that scene from On Golden Pond . . . Jane Fonda is cursing about her dad to her mom. And her mom slaps her and says, “That son of a bitch is my husband.” And you just basically grow up. You know? There comes a point when you can’t blame your parents anymore for your life. Her death, and being with her leading up to her death, brought that to an end for me. I mean that was kind of the end of the blaming; there really was no longer any parental reason for any of my problems. I had to own them myself. . . .

Receiving the Surprise Apology
Sometimes, especially after the Living partner in a difficult relationship has found a way to release some of the pain, he or she receives a lovely reward—an apology.

Pinky was given the gift of an apology from her mother. She would never have received it if she hadn’t given her mother something as well. Pinky was caring for her mother, perhaps mostly out of obligation. Despite cultural changes in gender roles, we still expect that mothers will take care of their babies, and more subtly, we still expect that daughters will take care of their dying parents. Pinky wasn’t caring for her mother with the expectation that she would receive an apology; after all, she had never received an apology before. She was caring for her because she was supposed to do this job. Pinky begins her story by explaining a little about their relationship. My mom and I did not get along. My mom beat me. My father beat me . . . There was a lot of bad karma between my mom and me. [But during her final weeks and days] the wall kind of went down.

My mother had her chair that she sat in. And she’d point to her feet and ask, “Take them off, please.” This was not my mother. My mother didn’t say take them off. My mother wasn’t this docile kind of a person, but now she was. She had these special shoes because she’d had some problems with her feet. So I would take off her shoes and massage her feet. That was a big deal for her. And she would just look at me. And I would just look at her. And again, this is somebody who—we didn’t get along. We hadn’t gotten along for a long time. A long time. But it didn’t matter any more. I never massaged anybody’s feet. And she had these calluses and whatnot . . . And I’d talk to her and just make conversation. I think it was kind of nervous at one point, and she said something like, “Tell me about your marriage.” I thought, and I remembered she knew something wasn’t right . . . so I explained to her that it wasn’t going well. And I cried. She just looked at me, and she said, “I’m sorry. I wish things were better. I’m sorry I wasn’t a better mother.” And that is worth 10,000 days of conversation.

We never had another conversation for the rest of my life or before—that was it. And that, more than anything, healed whatever was going on prior to any time . . . We did not have a good relationship for a lot of my life, but those simple words, “I’m sorry I wasn’t a better mother” [made all the difference in the world]. My mother was the best mother that she could possibly be, given what she came into the world with. And I knew at that exact moment. I’m eternally grateful that I had that final conversation. Within a couple of days, she went into a coma. Although Pinky expected nothing in return for caring for her mother, she received a sincere apology that released her from the strictures of a lifetime of pain . . .

Benefits of Heartache-Released Messages

Accepting and Forgiving
Many of the Living discovered that they needed to accept the Dying for who they were—flawed, imperfect human beings who made mistakes in their lives. By accepting that the Dying did the best they could, the Living were able to forgive the hurt and pain inflicted on them. Victoria states that the importance of her FC-talk with her mother had everything to do with being able to be the one who was there at the end, to be able to put a cap on my forgiveness and acceptance of her.

Similarly, Wallace accepted the reality of his marriage and the way that Marie, his wife, had treated him during their last years together. He spoke of the improvements in their relationship that followed the acceptance and forgiveness their FC-talk brought out. Our relationship for the last, maybe two years, before we knew she was dying, was distant. And then there was a vast improvement once the doctors said, “You’re done for.” You know? She apologized for what she had done to our marriage and so on. And of course, I forgave her. I was never mad at her to begin with. I just couldn’t understand it. Our relationship changed, and it was much better for the last four, four and a half months she lived after she was diagnosed with cancer.

Letting Go
Hanging on to piles of anger and resentment makes for a heavy load. In their FC-talks, the Living found a way to release excess baggage collected over a lifetime of disappointment, hurt, and anger. Holland said, It took a burden off my shoulders. Because by telling her I forgave her—I remember mentioning to her I forgave her for everything and there weren’t any bad feelings—I was releasing a lot of the power she had over me and taking the burden off a lot of things she said, because even memories are burdens.

When asked what the FC-talk did for her, Pinky replied that it was sanitizing. It needed to happen. And I don’t think it could’ve happened [without the impending death]. It had never happened before; we’d never approached that.

Moving Forward
Difficult relationships have a way of keeping people stuck—stuck in the muck of resentment, rage, and rancor that can overwhelm us when those who are supposed to be closest to us have hurt us. Think back to a time when someone really hurt you. It was difficult to think about anything else, it was impossible to do the things you enjoyed, and it felt heavy on your body—like a ton of bricks. You may have felt stuck, simply immovable. You probably thought there was nothing you could do to make yourself feel better. And once you felt hopeless, the pain got tucked away to be joined by other insults later on. And so forth. Is it possible to avoid stuffing our duffels with negative emotion? You can’t change the person who hurt you, but you can choose how you will react to hurtful situations—even if in those emotional moments, it doesn’t feel like you can. You can choose to blame the other person and harbor resentment, or you can talk about how both parties fed the situation.

The Living who spoke to us recognized that the only way to move forward was to get out from under those heavy loads of negative emotion. Thankfully, they recognized that FC-talk was a last opportunity to get unstuck with the Dying. In the instances they described to us, although the Dying didn’t initiate the conversations, they opened to cleansing and healing communication. Both the Dying and the Living were finally able to move on to their new paths.

Summary

FC-Talks and Heartache Released
Almost everyone has some kind of heartache to release. After all, almost every close relationship can be challenging from time to time. If, as the Living one, your relationship with the Dying one has not been consistently difficult, you can choose either to focus on the positive and not make it worse, or to clear the air of minor grievances. If on the other hand, you have had a very painful relationship with the Dying, you will find models among the Living who show compassion, forgiveness, and release in the face of death. They remind us what the human spirit is capable of accomplishing.

We aren’t telling the Living that they must initiate FC-talk with someone who has hurt them. Each person has to decide what’s possible or worth the risk. The Living who spoke with us were glad they did take the risk and did have the difficult talk. And based on our combined forty-four years of teaching interpersonal communication, we believe that for damaged relationships, the risk is worth the healing.

We’re all aware that we fail each other at times. Some of the Living simply cannot be vulnerable to the Dying, ever again. And some FC-talks will probably fail miserably to achieve the Living’s goals. We wish we could tell you without a doubt that all FC-talks are good and positive, but we can’t make that guarantee. There are costs and benefits to every communication. Only you know the costs and benefits in your relationship. So only you can decide whether the possible benefits outweigh the probable costs.

Cleaning up messes is never fun. In reality, cleaning up is something that no one looks forward to doing, but the benefits are usually worth the trouble. Some of the Living experienced their FC-talks as healing acts. For others, FC-talk marked only the beginning of their healing journey. We guess that some FC-talks have resulted in negative, even costly outcomes for others of the Living. Since these people understandably chose not to tell us about their FC-talks—maybe because it hurt too much to relive them—we can’t say for sure what these conversations were like.

Anger, hurt, and resentment are not uncommon feelings in families and close relationships. Those who are closest to us have the greatest opportunity to hurt us. What no one teaches us is that these negative emotions often hurt us more than they hurt the person who inflicted them. Letting go of this pain is the only way to move on to healthier relationships and happier lives. FC-talk at the end of life with the one who has caused the harm is one way for you to begin healing. If it is not possible, we strongly urge you to talk with a professional about the pain you still hold inside before it can cause any more damage.

Advice from the Living

• Release the power that your anger and resentment have over you by once and for all letting go of your baggage with the Dying.
  
• Be prepared for negativity. The Dying don’t become angels just because they are at death’s doorstep. Set some boundaries, if necessary, to protect yourself.
  
• Be fully present as much as you are able. Feel the emotions you want to express with the Dying. This is your chance to heal.
  
• Forgive. This decision is the most powerful one you can make in the face of hurt and pain. Forgive the Dying so they can let go; forgive them so you can move on.
  
• If you think that FC-talk will be too difficult for you or for the Dying, then your healing may have to begin after the Dying is gone. Get help.
  
• Don’t be afraid to work with a grief counselor. FC-talk does not heal all wounds; it just begins the healing process for many of the Living.
  
• Set yourself up to look back with compassion and move forward with no regrets.

- - -
Excerpt above from Final Conversations: Helping the Living and the Dying Talk to Each Other copyright © 2007 by Maureen P. Keeley, PhD and Julie M. Yingling, PhD, published by VanderWyk & Burnham. All rights reserved.