PRIVILEGE WON’T SAVE YOU FROM DYING BUT IT WILL MAKE IT EASIER

The whole time my mom was dying I kept thinking to myself, “Wow, we are so lucky.” This might seem like a bizarre reaction considering my beloved mother was only 69 and suffering from an incredibly rare and fatal disease that robbed her of her body and mind. But it was hard not to see how things could have been so much worse if my family didn’t have such incredible resources at our disposal.

For starters, my family is wealthy. I know I’m not supposed to admit that sort of thing but the only reason I live in a house on the west side of LA is because my dad owns it. He worked hard for decades as a lawyer in a New York firm, and it paid off big time (pun intended). So, when my mom got sick, the cost of her care wasn’t an issue. We didn’t have to worry that hiring around-the-clock care would bankrupt us or severely impact my father’s quality of life moving forward. Yes, the cost was exorbitant, but what is money for if not to give your loved one the dignity of dying at home?

Even just the ability to order whatever we needed as we needed it felt like a massive privilege. Oh, my mom needs a nightgown with snaps because she can’t control her arms? Let me order four. Oh shit, we actually need ones that snap in the back and not the front because it is so difficult to maneuver her body? No problem, I’ll get those instead without considering the price. While there was so much to stress about during those six weeks of her rapid decline, money was not one of them and that is an experience that is far too rare.  (Medical debt is one of the biggest financial issues in the U.S. and is a leading cause of people losing their homes.)