As I gather up my things for my trip to Illinois this weekend the reason is all to real. Every time I have made this journey this spring I’ve felt a sense of unease, dread almost, the night before leaving. Every trip carried with it the potential of being the last one where I’d see Mom alive. Tonight is no different; I feel a sense of unease that won’t go away.
My Mom is dead and I won’t see her this weekend. For the first time ever in my life I will go home and she won’t be there to greet me. And then on Saturday I’ll attend her memorial, hear words spoken by others, and speak some words myself, to say goodbye publicly.
My eyes are filling with the first real tears I’ve cried this week. The realization of what has happened and what is about to happen is really sinking in for the first time. I’ll never again be able to call her on the phone. She’ll never again recommend a new author or book to me. I’ll miss the times I was annoyed with her or upset by the difference we shared.
There are many events in a life that help you to grow. Some are easier to accept than others. I don’t know how I’ll ever accept that my mother is dead and I can never see her again.
Goodbye Mom.
When I was a kid my father and I tried line-controlled planes for a time. On one occasion I was able to complete a single lap before losing control and turning the plane into a small cloud of spare parts. Seeing the precision and skill in this video, then, is simply amazing to me.
I have managed to coast through this week on auto-pilot. Emotionally I have been flat with one or two angry outbursts for flavor. Physically I am exhausted and worn out. Mentally I’m just not focused at all. I’ve had to resort to making a list of things I need to accomplish this week so that I show up in Decatur with my suit and tie, dress socks and shoes. That it is a holiday shortened week isn’t helping matters at all as I feel like it is Wednesday and I have yet another day to prepare.
Tomorrow will be a long day as I am making the drive back to Illinois. Originally I was going to try and work the few remaining hours of my 32-hour week before going but I’ve decided that I need to take better care of me than that, and so I’ll be take some vacation time instead. I am looking forward to seeing my cousin, aunt and uncle over the weekend. I’ve not seen some of them for a long time. Funerals are such an odd mixture of reunion and sorrow.
My father forwarded to me a copy of the program Mom put together for the funeral. In addition to writing her obituary, she selected the music she wanted played:
Today it seems as if everyone is too busy to sit down and really connect. We are all racing around from one job or activity to another. Just getting together requires planning and work with all of our schedules. So it is very nice to discover that people really do care, and really do worry about each other.
The condolences left with my mother’s online obituary are heartfelt and beautiful. The calls and emails I’ve received from friends near and far have made me feel good inside. My coworkers have given me the space to just be, but have also let me know that they are supportive and caring of what I am going through.
The past year has been filled with great loss and tremendous obstacles, but it has also shown me just how caring and wonderful people truly are. The hospice and home health care nurses all took a genuine interest in my mom, and went out of their way to treat her and my father with the gentle love they needed. My faith in humanity has been greatly restored as a result of the interactions I had following Michele’s death last fall, and my Mom’s just a week ago.
If the deaths of two people so very important to me so close together have taken me to a dark and foreboding place deep in the woods, then the light of friendship and true caring has shown me a path leading out of the darkness. I am forever grateful to everyone who has reached out to me during the past few months. I do not have words to express how much your unconditional acceptance and love has meant to me.
Thank you all.
While outwardly I seem to be doing okay in the wake of my mother’s death on Sunday, inwardly I feel incredibly brittle. Last evening when I got home I discovered that the new litter box I bought a week ago isn’t going to work. There was a puddle of urine on the floor just past the edge of the box, mirroring one I found on Monday when I got home from Illinois. In cleaning up the mess I managed to spill several pounds of litter on the floor. Fortunately it had already been scooped but I was pissed (sorry) nonetheless.
As in the weeks immediately following Michele’s death last October, I am discovering that it is the little things that set me off. The distance between calm and collected and gibbering maniac is almost non existent. My rampaging emotions are starting to effect my cats; both are skittishness and poor Nekko has taken to throwing up her food. I think the time for intervention is here. I can no longer put off the need for one-on-one counseling.
The suicide survivors group is good and I feel that I am getting something important out of it. However, it only meets once a month, and I don’t always get to expose my stuff there. (Particularly the last two times as there has been a very self-centered and verbally energetic woman who has monopolized the time for herself.) Paying someone to focus on me for an hour or two each month maybe the way to proceed.
After this coming weekend, time will be under my control again. I won’t (for a little while anyway) feel like I need to travel to Illinois every couple of weeks. I realize that I have been tense for most of the last seven months; and further that this unending tension has made me brittle and prone to breakdowns and outbursts (Sounds like the name of a new country album.). I just need to find a constructive outlet for my anger, depression, anxiety, fear, sorrow, madness, apathy, loneliness, and ennui.
Yesterday, after returning from Illinois, I spent the afternoon and evening talking to friends on the telephone. All were some what amazed that I plan on trying to have a normal week this week. In explaining my reasons for wanting some normalcy right now I realized that the full impact of my mother’s death isn’t going to hit me for several days. Most likely the impact will come Saturday during and after the memorial service.
I think we have a “relationship inertia” that keeps us moving forward for some time after the relationship itself is severed for any reason. A couple breaks up and it is a few weeks of months, maybe longer, before the two individuals are free from the orbit they had around the other. When a loved one dies there is a similar lag while the momentum of life carries the living past the point of death. It takes a bit of time to slow down, stop and circle back around to reality of having lost some one forever.
I have known for months that my mother was dying. I knew several years ago when we moved to Washington that I was only going to have a limited number of visits with her again. Every visit with her this spring had the potential to be the last. The first weekend of May, when I was there for my birthday, I talked to her for the last time, and we said goodbye to each other. This past weekend, while she did look at me one time, was really about being with my dad. The spirit and personality that made up my mom was already dying or gone by the time of my arrival.
Humans are creatures of ceremony, and we add importance to major events in our life through ceremony. High school graduations, weddings, birthdays - these are all occasions marked by ceremony. The event will still occur without a ceremony, but marking it through a public display makes it real and tangible. Next weekend my family and I will make the occasion of my mother’s death, and celebrate her life through two ceremonies; a private graveside service and public memorial service. The full impact of my loss won’t strike me until those events occur.
My mom died Sunday morning about 11:30. It was as peaceful as you could imagine. She simply stopped breathing, and died in her sleep.
Thursday evening my dad brought in a hospital bed and they set it, and her, up in the family room. The windows there look out on trees and birds and is quite lovely. He said that she was still talking a little bit then. I arrived on Friday and she opened her eyes and recognized me but didn’t speak. She was still talking a few droppers full of water every so often then. Saturday the hospice nurse came and, after she recorded my mom’s vitals, took Dad and I aside to tell us that she expected Mom would die within 24 - 48 hours. She proved to be prophetic as Mom died almost exactly 24 hours later.
Chris and Lisa came down for several hours in the afternoon. Throughout the day and into the night we were giving my mom liquid morphine, and placing cool compresses on her head and wrists to cool her off. She never exhibited any signs of pain or discomfort so I believe she was comfortable. I stayed up with her so my Dad could get some much needed sleep. During the night her breathing became labored and very raspy. Early Sunday morning it was very labored but around 9 o’clock it seemed to calm down. She was breathing very shallowly and softly then. We (my dad and I) were in the living room talking and I came into give her the next dosage of morphine at 11:30 only to discover she’d stopped breathing. She wanted to die at home and she got her wish. One time several weeks ago she told me that she thought dying in one’s sleep sounded like a peaceful way to go, and it was.
Having known this was coming for some time now has helped me to prepare somewhat for the aftermath. Although I am sure it will be several days before the full impact hits me. We are planning a memorial service and a private family graveside service for next weekend.
It is only going to be a matter of hours now before my mom dies. She has been unresponsive since later Thursday or early Friday. Calling her name or talking to her no longer even causes her eyes to open. The hospice nurse assures us that we are doing all that can be done, and I personally believe that she isn’t aware any more about her physical state.
Originally I was going to return to Kansas today, but I’ve decided that my place is here, supporting my father and helping him to care for Mom. I can’t imagine that she will last through the day, and secretly I hope she doesn’t as I don’t want her to suffer at all any more.
My brother and sister-on-law came by yesterday, as did a neighbor who has been friends with my mom for over 39 years. One of the home health care nurses, who is no longer seeing my mom as hospice is now in charge, came on her day off to visit with her. We’ve surrounded her with love and are basically waiting for her to let go.
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March 13, 1928 - May 28, 2006
The last few days have seen a sharp decline in my mother’s health. She is now sleeping nearly all the time, and has stopped eating. Her disorientation in terms of where she is, and even sometimes when she is, is increasing in frequency. She is so weak now that she is no longer able to walk or even stand on her own. Assisting her is becoming an impossible physical burden for my father. Yesterday they were forced to call upon the fire department to return her to bed after she was unable to help my father move her.
The hospice nurse indicates that a decline in her vital signs (blood pressure and the oxygenation of her blood) will be the signal that she has entered the final week of her life. So far her vitals have been consistently good; as one visiting nurse put it, “she’s a tough old lady.” Until she reaches that final week moving her to the hospice facility is not an option. Admitting her to the hospital is fraught with difficulties, not the least of which was her express desire to not die in the hospital. Hospitals view their purpose as doing everything they can to keep you alive, to prolong your existence. In my mother’s case there is nothing that can be done to cure her, so any measures taken in a hospital setting would only prolong the inevitable. The remaining options, then, are: hiring round the clock caregivers to be at the house with my mom or to admit her to a nursing home.
A catheter has been employed in a delaying action against making the decision about the next stage of her care. I am honored that my father has called me and talked to me about the choices, and their associated impacts. I cannot imagine the stress he must be feeling at having to make these calls, especially without the counsel of his wife of 45 years.
Sometimes, being an adult really sucks.