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A Loved One Remembered |
In his tribute
below George recounts the ordeal of his wife
in the throes of her vain struggle with a merciless disease.
The photograph shows Esther Mae at age 50.
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Esther Mae Miller’s Last Days
Sita was diagnosed with stomach
cancer on Sept. 19, 2005. We had
read and were told by doctors then that cancer of the stomach is the meanest
kind. This we found to be understatement. Sita began chemotherapy treatments
in October. At first there seemed to be some progress but in the ensuing
months and weeks, she began suffering more and more with extreme nausea and
the recurring and damnable vomiting spells which never turned up more than a
minute bit of spittle but which added increasing pain and misery to an
already-hurting stomach each time.
There was pain in her legs and lower back that progressively got
worse. Early Thursday morning on Feb. 23,
2006 she started trying to get up from her hospital bed in our living room
(where I also slept, on the couch) and I went to her to help. She looked
dizzy and was unable to get herself sitting upright in the bed. She seemed to
want to get to the portable toilet next to the bed. With me trying to help, her legs gave way and she sank to
the floor between the bed and the toilet. Try as I might I could not lift her
back into the bed. She was dead weight and apparently had no strength in
either her arms or legs to help me get her up and into bed. I then called 911
for an ambulance. The ambulance took her to the
emergency room of the Seguin hospital for treatment. At the hospital she
seemed to be recuperating although she remained weak. She was able to talk to
me and to the medical staff despite sedation. The hospital staff advised they would
be moving her to a room in Intensive Care. I told them I needed to go to the
office to try to do something with the mountain of work that had been
accumulating in the weeks past and that they should call me when she was assigned
a room and I would come in. Not too long after that I got a call from the
pastor in her room, who advised she had taken a turn for the worse and I
should come. I did and when I got there she seemed to be sleeping rather
comfortably, but she was apparently in a comatose state because neither I nor
the six or seven friends and relatives in the room at the time could get her
to respond to questions. Her aunt and very good friend, Clara Jubela, asked
Sita repeatedly to squeeze her hand if she could hear her questions. She
never got a hand squeeze. Sita’s vital signs on the monitors in
the room were a bit weak but fluctuated for several hours: for a time it
seemed she was holding her own. Then the monitor signs started going down
very gradually and after a few more hours her heart simply stopped beating.
It truly was an easy death: she was breathing a bit heavily but seemed to be
painlessly sleeping while progressively getting weaker, until her life ended. Her death really got to me and others
in the room, but for me there was some consolation in knowing that finally
she would be free of the pronounced pain and misery she had been going
through for so many weeks. We
all knew – I in particular, having been with her in her illness – that even if she recuperated enough
to return home the pain and misery would never be escaped. Two plaintive statements I’ll never
get out of my mind are: “Bus, I
feel so bad” and “It’s just not worth it.” Over recent weeks she uttered them many times. The first one in particular cut
deep. In our 54 years of
marriage I was able to fix many things, but this time there was no fix. Whenever I left our home for a few
hours to address the monstrous workload piled up and always waiting at our
business, there would be her anxious words: “I’m so glad you’re home, Bus”
when I returned. For me these
words always overwhelmed. They brought forth my great remorse for having to
be away from her. Even when
explaining work had to be done if our business was to continue, inside I
wanted to cry and cry. Had we known she would die so quickly
she would have been saved much of her pain and misery: We could have decided against
chemotherapy and just let her live what months and weeks she had left with no
treatment at all except for pain medication. One particular early procedure to install a tube up her
arm to enable chemotherapy caused unbearable pain and misery for her (she
told me afterwards she hoped she would never have to go through something like
that again); in practice it failed, achieving nothing. Up to a dozen MRIs were prescribed;
all proved to be miserable experiences for her and all came back negative,
achieving nothing. The saddest thing I’ve ever seen is
her getting up over and over and sitting forlornly on the side of the bed to
alleviate her pain and nausea.
There was nothing you could do and it just broke your heart. Sita was the most beautiful woman the
state of Texas ever produced.
Why she settled for me for a husband I wonder still, as surely did the
many people we met on our frequent travels. I was blessed as few men can be.
I remained conscious of this always and did my very best to see that she had
a good life. George
“Buster” Miller (husband) |
A postscript
by George to his tribute above: "I made mention of Esther Mae repeatedly
getting up to sit forlornly on the side of the bed in desperate quest of some
relief from her misery -- especially near the end of her life. I would wake up
and see her sitting there often in silence looking so very, very alone with her
back toward me where I lay on the couch. It was a heart-rending sight that
can't be put into words. At those times I usually asked if she needed pain
medication or other help from me. I have belatedly come to believe -- to
realize -- that what she would have appreciated more than anything else was me
sitting beside her with an arm around her so that she could truly know the
depth of my love and feeling for her and what she was going through. I should
have done it every time. I did not. And there is a regret that
will gnaw until the day I die."
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