Last month my mother left this world, she was kind, generous had an indomitable faith but never loud about it. She was so good. She had been in pain for sometime but we didn’t know what it was. We had went to the doctor in February and they said to go to her specialists because it could have been a medication issue. She was a transplant patient and was on a lot of medication for her various conditions. I wrote her obituary, unlike a decade ago when it would have been a short paragraph in the newspaper as a sign of the times it was instead on the Families First website. Her passing was a loss, a gap had been creating by someone who along with my dad had been a rock. She had become more fragile over the years.
My mom had been through so much from diabetes, kidney failure, dialysis, a kidney transplant and other things that happen just because of old age. She was still her until late last year when she started eating less and less. We couldn’t know what that meant and we went to see what was going on but it wasn’t until we went to emergency but while she was diagnosed with pneumonia that wasn’t the cause of her pain.
She was not eating a lot because of pain and they didn’t do more tests even though my dad told the doctors about her pain when she ate. They focused on the pneumonia and we trusted what we were being told. That was a mistake because I believe if we could have had her tested more thoroughly, they would have found the issue and maybe it wouldn’t have changed a lot but we will never know. We lost so much time because when she came home a week later she still didn’t want to eat. I would have to call 911 again a month and a half later and even after all that it would take 5 days to a week before we got a proper diagnosis which was chronic pancreatitis. I don’t want to get into the details of what was happening because it still makes me so sad but we lost so much time where we could have gotten her help to let her know she could live. By the time we had a concrete diagnosis it was too late. Mom wouldn’t eat because it hurt too much. Eventually she couldn’t get fluids because her veins were so small they were almost impossible to get by even the best nurses on the floor.
The clock had started as she wouldn’t eat. She was on a diabetic diet which didn’t make a lot of sense to me. She should have been on smaller amounts of food frequently because of her condition which can be exaserated by eating white bread and other carbs, fats, oils and larger amounts. By this point all she wanted to do was die and we got to see her wither away to nothing before the end came. Her condition wasn’t improving in the hospital so she came home under the supervision of the palliative care team and she still wouldn’t eat. Her weight loss accelerated and it was so frustrating, we had a nurse come daily starting Friday when she had come home on Monday. It was a mess not anyone’s fault just it was all so new. We needed to get a hospital bed and personal support workers came to change and clean her for weeks until she eventually left this world.
The worst day was the Thursday before she past when she had a stroke but none of us saw it, my dad noticed and she had lost motor control on left side. She was still there, she could grab our hands and touch with her right but she was now a prisoner of her own body, she couldn’t speak or drink and we were so heartbroken. She stopped looking like my mom and by Saturday looked like she had come out of the walking dead. The Friday she would cry out of her left eye, a single tear would take 30 minutes to fall and we would wipe it. My brother stayed with her all night holding her hand. She was still there, she could squeeze our hands so I took her rosary off and put it in her hand so she could pray as she was coming home.
The next day I told my brother to say everything he wanted to say to her because she could go at any moment. I would go up to hold her hand and talk her, tell her she was so good, so loved and will be so missed. My dad spent Friday night with her, her breathing became ragged, as she started to breath out of her mouth and her face had become swollen and when I relieved him to he could sleep I cleaned her up as best I could and bathed her in the morning light for the last time. Minutes after my brother came, I told her it was OK and she was gone. Her suffering was over, her journey continues beyond the reach her mortal shell. She was free of the prison and could fly to join her parents and brother waiting for her on the other side.
I love my mom, she was so good and every day I whisper to myself “I miss my mom” I talk to her even if I’m talking to a ghost, I can’t not think about her daily, she was the best because she was my mom as are most moms to their children. I miss her every day and need to make sure I take what she has given me and run with it while I can. I don’t know what form that will take but I have to starting getting my own life in order. That’s what this sight is partially for. It’s my sounding board against the pain and the fear or reality. Whatever happens will be dedicated to my mom and my dad and I need to get going and make the story sing, for everything they have done and to prove to myself that I can.
The price of love is sorrow you feel, what makes life precious is how fragile it is, how limited our time is on Earth. If we could live forever, then time would mean nothing but because we only get so long, it is precious even if we don’t realize it. Thank you for your love mom, I didn’t always show it but you mean the world to me, you mattered because I can feel the gap in my heart that cannot be filled, that is broken and hurt because you are not their to bring it light. You were so beautiful inside and out, even if you didn’t feel that way at the end, your light was so bright and you will be missed by all who you touched and many you will never know. Even if it is painful it only hurts because you were loved so, so much by your nieces and nephews, sisters and nursing colleages and that love is worth everything. Thank you and I will always look to you as an example of belief without judgement. You didn’t judge others, you took them and me as I was, never pushing me to believe what you wanted me to and for that you have my gratitude and love. I didn’t make you proud in life but I hope I can do so now that you our guardian angel.
We went to