(A number of people have messaged to ask if it is appropriate to send flowers to the Mansion to honor Connie, and the aging process and the other residents in their mourning. I think it would be lovely to send some small floral arrangements to Connie, it would connect the Mansion to the outside world and recognize the great struggle of the elderly to live in love, comfort and dignity. The Mansion is all about that, and so was Connie. If you wish, you can send flowers to honor Connie, c/o The Mansion, 11 S. Union Street, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816. Small displays, perhaps. The residents are being told about Connie’s death this morning.)

Maria and Red and I went to Connie’s room to think about our experience with her and say goodbye. She is no longer really there, but her blue chair is, the reclining lift  chair  you bought her but which she never got to see.

We stood and sat quietly for a bit, and I reflect on my time and work with her and some thoughts about death. I started doing hospice work more than a decade ago with Izzy and Lenore, and have continued this work with Red, and hopefully, with Gus.

I have seen many people die during this time – everyone, really, except for some of the Mansion deaths, and have thought a lot about mortality and what I have learned.

Death is sad, almost always, but it is not only sad, and Connie’s death spoke of that.

Connie always controlled her idea of death. She moved out of her son’s home when she saw or felt – that she was becoming a burden and an intrusion.

She was careful to make sure no extraordinary measures were taken to keep her alive.

In her final year, she committed herself to renewing her knitting skills, making caps for sick and newborn children, scarves and sweaters for kidney patients, fellow residents and Mansion aides.

She was always available to the other residents to talk, listen to their concerns, and she had a wonderful way of kidding with the staff, yet loving them. She was especially close to Kelly, the night supervisor, they had the most honest and direct relationship.

Death is not always a tragedy. In Connie’s case, it was liberating. She told me and Maria that she was prepared to go. She had the idea that God would summon her when he was ready for her, and she fully accepted that. She did not wish to be a great cost to anyone, or to keep up what she came to see as a charade that she would miraculously get better.

“I am costing the world too much,” she told me one afternoon. I did not have any kind of response. That is for her to decide.

In her final weeks, almost every part of her body began to fail, although her spirit and awareness never faltered. But step by step, she had to give up all of the things that made this year so special for her. She could not walk, eat, knit or read. She could not read all of her letters, nor answer them.

Two vertebrae in her back fractured, and she was in constant pain. It was obvious medicine had nothing else to offer her. She suffered from congestive heart failure and emphysema. She was not a complainer but a stoic and survivor. She tried to walk, but could barely breathe afterward. Like all of us, she need more than that to justify her life to herself.

Connie was a fighter, but there are times when fighting is not the answer, acceptance is.

In the last months, she could not undertake the fiber work with Maria that was so exciting for them both, nor could she make it to the farm. She did not wish to further burden her children, who she thought of so often.

I am not religious in the way that Connie is, and God does not talk to me, my own sense of that was that Connie decided it was time, the quality and content of her life was simply disappearing.

So her death was sad, but was also liberating. More and more, I see that the elderly need support in their own decisions about how to die. There was much admirable about Connie – her intelligence, strength, love and courage.

Her death was just as admirable as her life. I think it was she who decided to go to God, not the other way around. And once having decided, she just went.

I felt sadness today, but also relief. The last year of Connie’s life was quite beautiful and uplifting. I was so grateful to see a life end in that way. No more pain for Connie.

I have learned also to look forward, not back. Lots more work for me and Red to do.