This is not my usual Throwback Thursday.

As regular readers know, I’ve been on a long voyage of discovery sifting through my parents’ papers and photographs since my dad was first hospitalized around Thanksgiving in 2008.

But I have just come across perhaps the most painful and most beautiful thing I’ve found to date. It’s a series of letters written by my mother, Helen Yonge Lind, to her brother and/or his wife over the five weeks before their mother’s death.

I think these are the originals, returned to her later. They are remarkable.

There’s a link to the letters at the end of this post.

In them, my mother describes the physical and psychological toll of caregiving, the trauma of dealing with the impending death of a parent, the incredible strength that people are capable of at these moments, the tensions within families dealing with this inevitable crisis, and more.

They date from the summer of 1959. The cast of characters: My grandmother, Heleualani Cathcart Yonge. At the time, she was 71. My mother, Helen, then age 45. Her older sister, Marguerite Shipp, who lived in Nevada. Their younger brother, James “Jimi” Yonge, who sailed the Pacific on Matson’s ocean liners, while his wife, Ida, lived in San Francisco. My dad is conspicuous by his absence. I don’t think I saw a single mention of him. My sister and I appear only by reference to “the children.” I turned 12 that summer. My sister, Bonnie, was four years older.

The first letter, dated July 19, 1959, is to Jimi and Ida, in San Francisco. Actually, Ida was in San Francisco, but Jimi worked on the Matson cruise ships that sailed the Pacific, always heading in or out of port, just passing through.

In the first paragraph, she conveys the difficult news. Their mother was dying. She was in pain, going downhill medically, and needed more assistance than my mother was able to offer her. She tells of the emotional trauma she was experiencing dealing with her mother’s deteriorating condition, of living between two worlds, with a family and two children in Honolulu, and her ailing mother in Waipahu.

The greatest shock I have had to face is looking her in the eye and telling her as gently as possible that there is little help except drugs to ease the pain, and that she must soon face death. Of course she knew it, but where there is life there is always hope.

She writes about something we’ve now experienced, trying to convince a dying parent that it would be better to get care in a hospital rather than insist on staying at home. She understood her mother’s desire to die at home, but saw no way to provide the care she needed in order to remain in her Waipahu house.

Then there’s this long passage.

I know that you are thinking how stupid it was of her not to go for medical aid in the very beginning. Up until Tuesday night, those were my opinions too. But you cannot hear her story without admiring her. She noticed the first symptoms about 3 or 4 years ago. She knew exactly what it was because she had helped with the care of old Tutu Nawaakoa who had the same thing. So she sat down and figured out the different courses open to her. An operation to remove a breast is a serious operation at any age, but for a woman approaching 70 it can quite possibly mean certain death, of if successful, another 10 years or even 15 years as sort of semi-invalid. It meant she would become financially and physically dependent upon her children and in her mind she might as well be dead. So she made up her mind to spend the rest of her life traveling around. She enjoyed every minute of it and she is not sorry. Those memories sustain her. When she knew she could go no longer she went home to die. Of course, she was under the impression that in a couple of months she would be dead. But the months have stretched out to almost 7 and it is a great disappointment.

The second letter was to Ida, written just eight days later. My grandmother’s condition had worsened, and it was now difficult for her to get to the bathroom or to care for herself, even with assistance. My mother’s effort to get her to agree to move to a hospital intensifies.

She writes of her mother’s amazing courage and faith as she greeted a steady stream of visitors.

Most of the callers don’t know she is going to die very soon, nor do they know that she knows it. She never lets on or breaks down in any way. She has asked me to tell two of her most loyal friends, and the way they broke down, you’d think they were the ones going soon. She never comlains about her lot. The only thing closest to a complaint is that she “prayed for God to take her, but I guess he just isn’t ready for me yet.”

The final two letters carry the story forward, through Jimi’s short visit, and my mom’s difficult interactions with her sister, Marguerite, who had arrived from the mainland. She writes of the terrible tension between the sisters, the one just visiting, the other living with the situation for months.

In a long letter dated August 14, 1959, she discusses the uncertain financial side of hospitalization, and describes the problem of finding a doctor in Honolulu who would agree to admit her mother to the hospital with the understanding that treatment would be limited to what is now referred to as palliative care only. That’s certainly one area where medicine has come a long way.

I had to shop around to find a doctor who would come to terms with me because I feel it is cruel to deliberatley prolong that life. The doctor at Waipahu suggested a friend of his who might agree to just make her comfortable and let nature take its course. In medical circles it is called “calculated neglect.” There are no x-ray treatments, no intravenous feedings. Just drugs to control the pain, the uneasy stomach, and drawing off the urine to give comfort. On Monday before Jimi came, she refused all drugs because she was afraid she would be too groggy to see him and recognize him. It just broke me heart when she couldn’t hold out any longer and told him, “I think you’d better go now. I don’t want you to see me in pain.”

The last letter was written on August 24, 1959, just the day before my grandmother died.

It begins: “It is simply amazing to me what punishment the human body can take and still live on and on.”

And she writes about the near break with her sister, who she found was encouraging their mother to stay at home, while my mom had been working overtime to find a hospital and a doctor willing to admit her. In the letter, she describes finally losing her temper and saying that if Marguerite persisted, my mother “washed her hands of the whole thing.” She threatened to simply leave and let Marguerite stay to provide the 24-hour care. That was apparently a winning argument.

These letters echo through time. More than 50 years later, roles were reversed. My mother was now in her late 90s, in failing health. We tried multiple times to convince her to move into a setting where she could get the 24-7 assistance that she needed. She refused to budge. She now wanted to stay in her home. I wish I could have read her earlier letters back to her as we faced the same issues so many years later.

In any case, it’s a remarkable series of letters. Hard to read, for sure. But I’m so glad that I found them. I appreciate all these women more deeply as a result.

You can read the series of letters here.