Maria Lentsman

At Death’s Door

Looking through delightfully plump folders containing family memorabilia – letters, postcards, photographs – I once found an ancient-looking little slip of paper that had the word “morphine” on it and looked like a medical prescription. The word, along with the paper, sounded too excitingly Sherlock Holmes to the 8 year-old me, so I immediately demanded an explanation from my grandfather. “Ah, Grandmother Xenia Pavlovna”, he said. Her story is so familiar it sounds like a generalized composite, with not much new to say. Following a month or two of inexplicable excruciating pain that was getting worse by the day, my great-great-grandmother was diagnosed with a terminal form of cancer. That was in the 1950’s, when Xenia was already around 70. Very soon the only way of hushing the pain was morphine, with my great-grandmother giving her mother injections. Xenia, an exceptional woman in every way, brave, strong-willed and full of wisdom, remained lucid when not in pain, and kept spending time with her grandchildren, telling them stories and teaching them things. I cannot imagine her complaining, or showing any signs of being tired of life and of the struggle. But the image of her three-month “burning out” seems to have carved itself deep into my then 12-year-old grandfather. “There came a day, he says, when the pain was impossible to control”. Increasing doses of morphine only granted short glimpses of lucidity followed by falling off into a blank, black and inhumane abyss. So she asked the family doctor to give her more morphine, decidedly, definitely more. Clinging to a life of suffering and pain and condemning her family to the same was not the option, not when the effects of the dangerous drug were starting to alter her mind. There was no arguing, no pleading, no forcing. On a quiet summer evening she fell asleep, and was gone. I do not think there was ever any controversy about her decision in the