I have been avoiding this. I mean I have had blogger's block for a while now but I have especially been avoiding writing about my mother, for I knew I would simply break down.
Perhaps some of you read my posts last April when after a series of hospital stays my mother was considering stopping dialysis and what that meant as far as what she would face and how much time she would have. Well, she got stronger and decided to give it another go. Although she had some good days, she never got better. On top of everything else her body had endured, she had also been diagnosed with COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmanary Disease). It was the not being able to breath and struggling for every breath that took her to the hospital several more times over the following months. Each visit usually a week's stay at a time.
She had spent the last week of July in and by August 4th was begging to be taken back in for she absolutely could not breath. It was then that she finally started to express to her doctors what she previously had only shared with the family, that she was done. She didn't want to live with it all any longer. It was at this same time that her doctors began to share with us that there was nothing more medically they could do for her. She was only going to get worse and she couldn't have taken what worse had in store. Throughout that week she continued to express what she wanted and with her blessing, I set up a meeting with the family and her doctor to make it official.
That meeting was supposed to take place on Saturday, August 9th, but she unexplicably took a turn for the worse Thursday night into Friday morning. I spoke to her doctor that morning and it didn't look good. My boys were going to be gone for the weekend and I had a feeling that if I waited out the weekend for them to see her again it would be too late, so I took them up Friday afternoon. To say we all were shocked by her condition when we arrived would be an understatement. She could barely speak but if we got close enough she could recognize us. After not to long, I sent my boys down to the waiting room and I preceeding to tell my mother it was ok for her to let go that we'd all be ok. I told her I loved her and she said, "I love you too baby". That was our goodbye. She never said another actual word, to me, that is. She did, the next day though, lean up as much as she could toward me when I leaned in to kiss her and kissed me back.
I called my brother after I left the hospital and said the way she looked I didn't think she would make it though the night. He said, "I know. That's what I felt when I was there this morning". I spoke to her doctor at 4:00 pm that afternoon and the decision was made to stop all treatment and just do what they could to keep her comfortable until the end. He felt she wouldn't have more than 5 days at that point. We decided to keep the meeting we had scheduled so that we could discuss what this time would entail.
Her twin sister and her husband were already on their way from Missouri. My brother in Wisconsin wasn't coming 'til the morning, in time for the meeting, so I called him and told him if he wanted any chance of saying good-bye, he should come now. He was here within a couple hours when it should have taken him more like 3 (sshhh, don't tell the state police that).
I had made plans that night to have dinner with friends as one friend who had moved away a couple years ago was going to be in town and I made the decision to go ahead with those plans. I felt guilty but I knew my mother and I had had our good-byes.
At the meeting the next morning, her doctor said he felt we were talking a matter of hours rather than days. 3 days at the most. Her room that day was filled with family. Her twin, all three of her children and significant others, a nephew (her twin's son) and two of her granddaughters came for a while too. It was hard just sitting there watching her. Our hearts stopping every time there was a long pause between her breathes. Each time thinking to ourselves, "was that it? Was that her last?" Excruciating.
My aunt stayed as long as she possibly could. She had said, "I was with her when she came into this world, it's only right that I'm with her when she goes". Her heart so obviously breaking.
By Sunday afternoon mom was in a coma. On Saturday she had startled and opened her eyes at just about every sound. A simple cough or sneeze...or the loud boom of an oxgen tank being knocked over to crash to the tile floor not once but twice (I won't name names but they know who they are - hehe). When she did open her eyes, there wasn't much recognition. She mainly stared at the ceiling. We chose to believe she was seeing the lights and sights of heaven then. Seeing those who were waiting there for her. The only time she spoke was to tell her sister she would see her in heaven, told my brother we were all going to heaven, and asked for my dad.
All of that was gone late Sunday and we really thought she would go that day since it was 21 years to the day since my dad had passed away. We really thought she was writing her own history there by holding out for the anniversary of his death, but Sunday came and went. My aunt and cousin went on home to Missouri that evening knowing now she essentially was gone to us and felt comfortable knowing she knew they had been there and were ok with that.
Sunday turned into Monday and Monday turned into Tuesday. We had been taking shifts. Sometimes we all were there, sometimes only a couple of us were there but someone was with her all the time. At least two of us stayed each night. The accommodations weren't exactly 4 Star - unless it's typical to tip over backward while trying to sleep in a crappy recliner at a 4 Star hotel...somehow I doubt it. But it didn't matter - we wanted to be with her.
By Wednesday we were asking ourselves what she could be holding on for. The hospice nurses we so great. They answered all our questions, told us what to expect and ease our fears and concerns as best they could. That day they encouraged us to start leaving her alone for longer periods of time. That's it's possible she could be waiting 'til people weren't there. Whether it was to spare us or to just go on her own. So, we all left at noon that day. Again, each of us saying goodbye. After everyone else had left the room, I leaned directly to her ear and said, "you go ahead and go now mom, we love you".
No one went back up 'til about 7:30 pm that night. I had actually taken Jace to the pool that night since I felt I had been neglecting him and shuffling him around at all hours of the night so that I could go back up to the hospital to spend the night. I was considering not going back up that night. I had stayed every other night so I was kicking around the idea of sleeping in my own bed that night and going up after I took Brendon to freshman orientation that next morning. I had spoken to my brothers at 8:00 pm and there was no change.
At about 9:45 pm, I was still debating what I was going to do when the phone rang...it was my brother. He asked me if I was planning on coming back up. I said I hadn't decided yet and he proceeded to tell me she had just vomited some sort of black substance and was not breathing well since. The nurses were cleaning her up but it didn't look good. I said I would change my clothes and be right there. I went down stairs and told the big boys that grandma had taken a turn for the worse and that I needed to go, I grabbed some clothes from the laundry room, went to my room and changed, I doubled checked my bag I had been lugging back and forth since I planned on being there through the night now, and was grabbing my shoes when the phone rang again. It was my brother telling me she was gone. 10:05 pm, Wednesday, August 13, 2008...she was gone.
I can't tell you how upsetting it was that after being there almost every moment and if I hadn't been selfishly thinking of taking the night off that night, I would have been back to the hospital before all this happened, how upsetting it was that when the end did come - I wasn't there. My pain for myself turned to heartache for my brother that he had to go through it alone. But you know, I think she planned it that way, that she waited 'til the oldest and seemingly the strongest was there and spared the others. I know that is a hard position to put my brother in but I think she felt safe there with the person who always took care of her. And that's not to say others haven't been there for her, but my brother did shoulder the brunt more than most.
The next few days were a blur. Finalizing funeral arrangements which included a visitation service here in town as well as a visitation and funeral in her home town in Missouri. Then she was buried not far from there in a family cemetery next to my dad. 21 years and 3 days - they were together again.
We came back to Iowa the same day and that was one of the hardest things to do...to leave her there...to come home without her. We always went to Missouri as a family and came home as a family. But like I've told friends, I know she is where she wants to be. I know I’ll go through the same struggle that I did when my dad died that there is no grave I can visit regularly. I can’t put flowers on her grave when I am thinking of her. That will be hard.
When I think about being at her house, I just keep expecting her to come walking out from the bedroom or the bathroom. I really just keep expecting this to have all been a bad dream, another time when she thought about stopping dialysis but she changed her mind again and is really still with us.
I knew this would be the hardest part…going on with out her. I can’t just pick up the phone and call her to be a sounding board and then get mad at her when she finds the negative in what I’m saying. That was how we were.
My emotions have been all over the place. Like when a friend said, "My heart just goes out to you. I’m not even going to tell you all the old clichés that you don’t want to hear cause I know it won’t do any good when I know that all you want is your mom". My response was, "You are right (and it made me chuckle) that everyone says the same thing…that she is at peace or not hurting anymore or in a better place…and I know all of that in my head…it’s just hard for my heart to accept. It was her choice to stop her dialysis and I told her several times it was ok to let go. And it was, I knew this is what she wanted, to not be in pain anymore…I knew all along I would just be strong for her and help her let go and deal with my emotions when she was gone and that’s what I’m trying to do".
Yesterday was one of my worst days and I broke down in an e-mail to another friend... "People say I have been so strong, stronger than they would be if they lost their mother and then I feel guilty that my lack of breaking down in tears means I didn’t care. I feel guilty that I wasn’t always there for my mom and can never make that up to her. I wasn’t always kind to her or about her to others and I can’t take it back. I’m angry at people for asking me how I’m doing. It’s like they expect me to fall apart at that moment and spill my most inner thoughts and feelings and that just isn’t going to happen. I’m doing as well as can be expected and I don’t know what they want me to say. We are going to start packing up her belongings this weekend. I feel like this whole thing of finalizing her affairs is going to rip what is left of my family apart and through it all I just keep expecting it all to have been a bad dream. That she is at her house right now milling around, doing her laundry during the commercials of her soaps and if I were to walk in the door there’d she’d be still getting by. It constantly hits me like a tons of bricks that if I do walk in her house, she isn’t there and that I can’t pick up the phone and call her. I can’t get over the fact that one Friday night I was sitting with you all having drinks and the next Friday night I was greeting people at her visitation service. I know that it’s all still so new and that in time it will get better. I also knew all along that I would be strong for her to help her let go and then deal with my emotions afterward but I can’t shake the feel that we should have had more time. I don’t want to go back to work and be around a bunch of people. I am just not ready to go on without her."
I miss her so much!!!
Perhaps some of you read my posts last April when after a series of hospital stays my mother was considering stopping dialysis and what that meant as far as what she would face and how much time she would have. Well, she got stronger and decided to give it another go. Although she had some good days, she never got better. On top of everything else her body had endured, she had also been diagnosed with COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmanary Disease). It was the not being able to breath and struggling for every breath that took her to the hospital several more times over the following months. Each visit usually a week's stay at a time.
She had spent the last week of July in and by August 4th was begging to be taken back in for she absolutely could not breath. It was then that she finally started to express to her doctors what she previously had only shared with the family, that she was done. She didn't want to live with it all any longer. It was at this same time that her doctors began to share with us that there was nothing more medically they could do for her. She was only going to get worse and she couldn't have taken what worse had in store. Throughout that week she continued to express what she wanted and with her blessing, I set up a meeting with the family and her doctor to make it official.
That meeting was supposed to take place on Saturday, August 9th, but she unexplicably took a turn for the worse Thursday night into Friday morning. I spoke to her doctor that morning and it didn't look good. My boys were going to be gone for the weekend and I had a feeling that if I waited out the weekend for them to see her again it would be too late, so I took them up Friday afternoon. To say we all were shocked by her condition when we arrived would be an understatement. She could barely speak but if we got close enough she could recognize us. After not to long, I sent my boys down to the waiting room and I preceeding to tell my mother it was ok for her to let go that we'd all be ok. I told her I loved her and she said, "I love you too baby". That was our goodbye. She never said another actual word, to me, that is. She did, the next day though, lean up as much as she could toward me when I leaned in to kiss her and kissed me back.
I called my brother after I left the hospital and said the way she looked I didn't think she would make it though the night. He said, "I know. That's what I felt when I was there this morning". I spoke to her doctor at 4:00 pm that afternoon and the decision was made to stop all treatment and just do what they could to keep her comfortable until the end. He felt she wouldn't have more than 5 days at that point. We decided to keep the meeting we had scheduled so that we could discuss what this time would entail.
Her twin sister and her husband were already on their way from Missouri. My brother in Wisconsin wasn't coming 'til the morning, in time for the meeting, so I called him and told him if he wanted any chance of saying good-bye, he should come now. He was here within a couple hours when it should have taken him more like 3 (sshhh, don't tell the state police that).
I had made plans that night to have dinner with friends as one friend who had moved away a couple years ago was going to be in town and I made the decision to go ahead with those plans. I felt guilty but I knew my mother and I had had our good-byes.
At the meeting the next morning, her doctor said he felt we were talking a matter of hours rather than days. 3 days at the most. Her room that day was filled with family. Her twin, all three of her children and significant others, a nephew (her twin's son) and two of her granddaughters came for a while too. It was hard just sitting there watching her. Our hearts stopping every time there was a long pause between her breathes. Each time thinking to ourselves, "was that it? Was that her last?" Excruciating.
My aunt stayed as long as she possibly could. She had said, "I was with her when she came into this world, it's only right that I'm with her when she goes". Her heart so obviously breaking.
By Sunday afternoon mom was in a coma. On Saturday she had startled and opened her eyes at just about every sound. A simple cough or sneeze...or the loud boom of an oxgen tank being knocked over to crash to the tile floor not once but twice (I won't name names but they know who they are - hehe). When she did open her eyes, there wasn't much recognition. She mainly stared at the ceiling. We chose to believe she was seeing the lights and sights of heaven then. Seeing those who were waiting there for her. The only time she spoke was to tell her sister she would see her in heaven, told my brother we were all going to heaven, and asked for my dad.
All of that was gone late Sunday and we really thought she would go that day since it was 21 years to the day since my dad had passed away. We really thought she was writing her own history there by holding out for the anniversary of his death, but Sunday came and went. My aunt and cousin went on home to Missouri that evening knowing now she essentially was gone to us and felt comfortable knowing she knew they had been there and were ok with that.
Sunday turned into Monday and Monday turned into Tuesday. We had been taking shifts. Sometimes we all were there, sometimes only a couple of us were there but someone was with her all the time. At least two of us stayed each night. The accommodations weren't exactly 4 Star - unless it's typical to tip over backward while trying to sleep in a crappy recliner at a 4 Star hotel...somehow I doubt it. But it didn't matter - we wanted to be with her.
By Wednesday we were asking ourselves what she could be holding on for. The hospice nurses we so great. They answered all our questions, told us what to expect and ease our fears and concerns as best they could. That day they encouraged us to start leaving her alone for longer periods of time. That's it's possible she could be waiting 'til people weren't there. Whether it was to spare us or to just go on her own. So, we all left at noon that day. Again, each of us saying goodbye. After everyone else had left the room, I leaned directly to her ear and said, "you go ahead and go now mom, we love you".
No one went back up 'til about 7:30 pm that night. I had actually taken Jace to the pool that night since I felt I had been neglecting him and shuffling him around at all hours of the night so that I could go back up to the hospital to spend the night. I was considering not going back up that night. I had stayed every other night so I was kicking around the idea of sleeping in my own bed that night and going up after I took Brendon to freshman orientation that next morning. I had spoken to my brothers at 8:00 pm and there was no change.
At about 9:45 pm, I was still debating what I was going to do when the phone rang...it was my brother. He asked me if I was planning on coming back up. I said I hadn't decided yet and he proceeded to tell me she had just vomited some sort of black substance and was not breathing well since. The nurses were cleaning her up but it didn't look good. I said I would change my clothes and be right there. I went down stairs and told the big boys that grandma had taken a turn for the worse and that I needed to go, I grabbed some clothes from the laundry room, went to my room and changed, I doubled checked my bag I had been lugging back and forth since I planned on being there through the night now, and was grabbing my shoes when the phone rang again. It was my brother telling me she was gone. 10:05 pm, Wednesday, August 13, 2008...she was gone.
I can't tell you how upsetting it was that after being there almost every moment and if I hadn't been selfishly thinking of taking the night off that night, I would have been back to the hospital before all this happened, how upsetting it was that when the end did come - I wasn't there. My pain for myself turned to heartache for my brother that he had to go through it alone. But you know, I think she planned it that way, that she waited 'til the oldest and seemingly the strongest was there and spared the others. I know that is a hard position to put my brother in but I think she felt safe there with the person who always took care of her. And that's not to say others haven't been there for her, but my brother did shoulder the brunt more than most.
The next few days were a blur. Finalizing funeral arrangements which included a visitation service here in town as well as a visitation and funeral in her home town in Missouri. Then she was buried not far from there in a family cemetery next to my dad. 21 years and 3 days - they were together again.
We came back to Iowa the same day and that was one of the hardest things to do...to leave her there...to come home without her. We always went to Missouri as a family and came home as a family. But like I've told friends, I know she is where she wants to be. I know I’ll go through the same struggle that I did when my dad died that there is no grave I can visit regularly. I can’t put flowers on her grave when I am thinking of her. That will be hard.
When I think about being at her house, I just keep expecting her to come walking out from the bedroom or the bathroom. I really just keep expecting this to have all been a bad dream, another time when she thought about stopping dialysis but she changed her mind again and is really still with us.
I knew this would be the hardest part…going on with out her. I can’t just pick up the phone and call her to be a sounding board and then get mad at her when she finds the negative in what I’m saying. That was how we were.
My emotions have been all over the place. Like when a friend said, "My heart just goes out to you. I’m not even going to tell you all the old clichés that you don’t want to hear cause I know it won’t do any good when I know that all you want is your mom". My response was, "You are right (and it made me chuckle) that everyone says the same thing…that she is at peace or not hurting anymore or in a better place…and I know all of that in my head…it’s just hard for my heart to accept. It was her choice to stop her dialysis and I told her several times it was ok to let go. And it was, I knew this is what she wanted, to not be in pain anymore…I knew all along I would just be strong for her and help her let go and deal with my emotions when she was gone and that’s what I’m trying to do".
Yesterday was one of my worst days and I broke down in an e-mail to another friend... "People say I have been so strong, stronger than they would be if they lost their mother and then I feel guilty that my lack of breaking down in tears means I didn’t care. I feel guilty that I wasn’t always there for my mom and can never make that up to her. I wasn’t always kind to her or about her to others and I can’t take it back. I’m angry at people for asking me how I’m doing. It’s like they expect me to fall apart at that moment and spill my most inner thoughts and feelings and that just isn’t going to happen. I’m doing as well as can be expected and I don’t know what they want me to say. We are going to start packing up her belongings this weekend. I feel like this whole thing of finalizing her affairs is going to rip what is left of my family apart and through it all I just keep expecting it all to have been a bad dream. That she is at her house right now milling around, doing her laundry during the commercials of her soaps and if I were to walk in the door there’d she’d be still getting by. It constantly hits me like a tons of bricks that if I do walk in her house, she isn’t there and that I can’t pick up the phone and call her. I can’t get over the fact that one Friday night I was sitting with you all having drinks and the next Friday night I was greeting people at her visitation service. I know that it’s all still so new and that in time it will get better. I also knew all along that I would be strong for her to help her let go and then deal with my emotions afterward but I can’t shake the feel that we should have had more time. I don’t want to go back to work and be around a bunch of people. I am just not ready to go on without her."
I miss her so much!!!
3 comments:
Of course I know all of this already, but reading it brought tears to my eyes. I'm so sorry for your loss. I can only imagine how hard this is for you. But we (your friends) are here for you whenever you need us. Just tell me what you need and I'll be there for you. No matter what time.
I am so very sorry for your loss.
I recently loss my mom and ran across your blog. I totally understand your pain and hope I can get through this. Everyday I am home online reading about the illness that took her away and trying to make sense of why this would happen to such a beautiful person. I always want to pick up the phone and call her I am heartbroken.
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