My mom died one week ago, and the only thing I can bring myself to move today that isn't being run by my autonomic nervous system are my fingers. I am inspired to draw, I am inspired to paint, I am inspired to 'do things' but cannot bring myself to even finish my cup of tea. It's one of those days in the throes of a new round of adjusting life with a death.
This is one of the worst days so far. I'm not young, my mother wasn't young. I am relieved that with a body that degenerated in one month from being at home feeding her feral cats and hanging laundry (and yes, falling all the time) she is free from being unable to move or swallow to even be fed - she couldn't feed herself....she was bedridden for one entire month, 4 days after her 87th birthday on Christmas Eve. My last phone call with her was the day before her birthday. We had an actual conversation, she asked questions (about my standard poodle, Cheyana) and I asked her stuff, to which she had replies. Then bam.
The caregiver was preparing her lunch, turned on her oven without looking inside for the stuff that old people might store in their ovens, and yes, it started a fire. In order for the agency's insurance company to have a team come and clean the entire house from the soot and smoke damage, my mom had to leave the premises she occupied since 1972. I lived there just out of high school, then again with my first daughter when I got divorced, then again at the end of my second pregnancy while not married back in 1984, when it was still a moral crime to be unmarried and pregnant.
Fast forward to today. Grief. Writing. Journaling. All that. I've written journals my entire adult life, and made by hand one journal at 14 after reading The Diary of Anne Frank. My sister just found that journal when she and my brother cleared out mom's house. I look forward to reading what my 14 year old 'little girl' had to say, dream and write.
Having late stage congestive heart failure and being too stubborn to take her meds to control it, mom was put in a temporary Hospice care home until her house would be cleaned up and restored to order. If you remove an elder from their familiar surroundings and put them in a strange bed in unfamiliar surroundings, surprising and unexpected downhill turns can manifest.
That was a temporary facility and she 'wasn't of a terminal condition', and she seemed to be getting weaker so through extensive bureaucratic hoop jumping by my sister and brother, they got her placed in a dementia care 'end of life' group home. It was a nice place, actually. There, she just got weaker by the day, had to be fed, her meds crushed and given in applesauce, and placed in adult diapers, unable to get up to use bathroom or take showers. She couldn't even sit up. It was then my younger daughter and I went back to visit, as my sister said the nurses say she doesn't have much time left.
It was a very good visit, as my mom was more alert than she had been during our time, and it was both emotional, touching and horrifying simultaneously to see this once vital woman 'dying all of our worst nightmare'. She had 'episodes' of feeling like she was falling and having some God awful hallucination and shook, grabbing the bed and window frame and crying out with closed eyes. Either my daughter or my brother would hold her hands and talk her through it. I would say "breath mama, breath through your nose to get oxygen, like this...." - and I'd take deep breaths to show her. That seemed to alleviate her nightmare through one or two, but once it lasted so long, and to watch this happen effected me in a way I cannot put words to, but cry at the memory as I type this. Thank GOD that is over. Thank GOD she had the where-with-all back when she was cognizant to sign the DNR form and the form to not sustain her life through any artificial means.
One month to the day she was removed from her home, she died. The degeneration 'curve' was not a curve at all, but rather a vertical line going straight down. After our visit, during which we brought her her beloved iced coffee from Starbucks - that was a good day - she could no longer swallow. It would be at this juncture that they'd surgically install a feeding tube had she not signed that paper.
It was also at this juncture they began giving by mouth liquid morphine, as the pain of this stage is pretty intense. My daughter & I were back home at this stage, and she was on the morphine for only two days when she began her final transition. My sister sat with her throughout her last day on the planet. She writhed in the bed, clearly and literally coming out of her skin, her body. The nurse and chaplin both told my sister that her spirit was trying to leave her body.
Fortunately, I had a two or three hour time to myself with her one evening during our short visit. I changed the blaring TV channel to Animal Planet and turned the sound down and dimmed the lights. My mom glanced at the TV and got a smile and said, "ah, nature" She needed to see that. I played healing music and the Gayatri Mantra for her from You Tube and sang along with both. This changed the energy of the room and brought about some ease. I had a chance to do some energy work and frequency balancing to also bestow ease so she could be 'cleared for take off' - I'd hoped she would pass through that night, but Divine timing isn't something that happens when we wish it to.
When my sissy sat with her that last day, we were on the phone, and she put the phone on speaker and I did get to tell my mommy that I love her, that she did well with her kids, and dad was waiting for her. "I love you mommy" - it was the gift my sister got to have that she said was beyond words, to witness our mother's hard work to disengage from that broken old body.
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