My mom died in June 2012, and I am still grieving her passing. I have been told by many meaningful friends and family that we don't pick when, where or how we are going to die, but I feel like her demise was a nightmare that I couldn't wake from. The kind of nightmare where you're screaming for someone to hear you and no one takes notice. That's what happened to my beautiful mother. She was not a well woman, but she was strong as an ox; at 82, she was living with heart disease, congestive heart failure, beat cancer and had a 100% recovery from a stroke that was caused by her primary physician (he stopped her Coumadin to do gall bladder surgery and forgot to put her back on). I was her primary caregiver. I took care of her financial needs, her shopping, and physician appointments. She remained independent (at her stubborn insistence) until the end. She woke one day with a breathing difficulty; classic congestive heart failure. She called for an ambulance, as she always did when she knew something was really wrong. The ambulance took her to a different hospital than the one she normally visited for her ailments. Unfortunately, the hospital told me they had a "process" whereby they needed to run a full gamut of tests regardless of what her attending cardiologist told them. That meant taking her off her Coumadin. I told anybody and everybody I could that she couldn't be taken off Coumadin, because she would have a stroke and I was looked at like I was speaking a different language - I even had the nurses write my instructions in her chart. It had no effect; she stroked out and never recovered. I watched her die for two weeks. The physician who ordered her off the Coumadin never even came to see her, nor did they call me to let me know her status - I was with her all day, every day, by her bedside until she passed away. The anger is slowly dissipating, but every time I try to grieve my mother, I keep remembering the how....