Hello, dear readers. I hope this post finds you in good health.
As I sit in my dark house the sun is shining full blast outside, the temperature is a mild 70⁰F, the birds are singing, and a gentle breeze is blowing through the trees. By all accounts, this is a beautiful day and I should be outside doing something. Anything.
Instead, my chihuahuas are cuddled next to me and dozing in and out of consciousness (as dogs are wont to do), while I sit here on the couch, typing away on my laptop, trying to determine whether I should write this post at all. I understand on a logical level that nothing out of the ordinary has occurred, it’s just a fact of being. This is the nature of life, how inevitably the wheel turns and it happens all the time.
But not to me.
You see, my Mommy died.
It wasn’t an unexpected event. The last three months she’d been in and out of the emergency room and sometimes was admitted to the hospital, was “fixed” and then discharged. There didn’t seem to be one specific ailment going on, just a jumble of issues. Still, it was incredibly distressing. So when she was admitted to the hospital at the beginning of this month, I thought it would be another quick stay and back home. When I received her text “I.m very sick.I’m in Memorial Hospital room 558” alarms went off in my head.
First, she rarely admitted to being sick. When I visited her after she had her clavicle replacement surgery back in February, she must have seen how worried I was. I didn’t tell her that I was deeply concerned not only about the rapid decline of her physical health, but her mental faculties as well, however, she sensed my distress and kept reassuring me that she would get better. She promised.
Second, her grammar was incorrect. That’s something Mom would not do in normal circumstances.
When I visited again in April last month, I was gobsmacked. It was like being punched in the stomach. Initially, she didn’t recognize me. It took a few minutes and then she held up her hand and counted on her fingers the children she had and their names in chronological order. That was disturbing. She had extreme difficulty getting up from a seated position, and if someone was there, she insisted on help and wouldn’t do it all. She shuffled along with her walker and sometimes required a wheelchair. She was barely eating and I don’t recall her drinking anything unless prompted, and even then she may or may not oblige. Holding a normal conversation was difficult.
She did improve greatly while I was there for that trip because she went to the ER for pelvic pain and they rehydrated her. She was so dry. I ignorantly thought that all she had to do was keep drinking water to stave off the more severe symptoms of dementia. (Yes, that is a remote possibility.) When I left she was lucid and could carry on a conversation. I encouraged her to exercise more and pretended with her that all was well. However, when I returned home, I was frantic to find her a place to live. She didn’t want to move out of the area, so that left only skilled nursing which I also know she didn’t want, but there really wasn’t any choice.
After making quite a few calls I discovered the skilled nursing facilities in the area were all filled up. No room available. At all. I put her on several wait lists where the time was anywhere from 15 months to 2 years. Any sooner than that required waivers that needed to be signed by caseworkers or doctors. Not knowing how long she would remain in her current condition, I just crossed my fingers and hoped for the best.
Only two weeks after seeing her she was re-admitted into the hospital. She wasn’t answering her cell phone, so I called the nurse on duty. She told me Mom had pneumonia and was retaining water in random areas on her body but she sounded confident that all would be well. I told her I live 6 hours upstate and asked if should I be coming down. She assured me there was nothing urgent going on.
I talked and texted my mom a few more times. Her texts were odd and confusing, and the phone calls, when she answered, were short and not cogent. Eventually, I started calling the shift nurse and getting updates that way. After getting Mom to answer her phone on Saturday 11 when all she could manage to gasp was “I can’t…I can’t…” I stopped her and said I’d be there soon, trying not to cry as I did so, and immediately called my sister and told her the situation. I knew I had to go down yet again as soon as I could. My sister lives in Texas, so her visit required more effort and money than throwing together a suitcase and popping it into the back of a car. Her daughter, my niece, decided to come along.
The soonest they could make it was Tuesday 14.
We met up in Bakersfield, ate some Chinese food, and I went directly to the hospital while they took their rental car to pick up some supplies needed in the hotel room we booked.
I thought I couldn’t be more shocked than the last time I saw her, that I was prepared. I was wrong. When I walked around the corner into her hospital room, I stopped and almost took a step back.
She was tiny, diminished, a shell of the woman I knew. Her chest heaved every time she took a breath. I had to steel myself to cross the threshold and present myself to her without losing my composure. I called her name several times before she opened her eyes, and when she did, those blue eyes were vacant. She didn’t recognize me yet again, but like last time, a light came on after a few minutes. My smile was tremulous at best.
Funny how that works. She knew she was dying; I knew she was dying; the nurses and doctors at the hospital knew she was dying; in fact, anyone could see she was dying. But did we acknowledge it? Nope. In our culture, death is not addressed, so when we’re at this point in our life journey, no one knows how to act. So we paste on happy faces and fight the tears. Is it for the one dying or for us that we do this? I don’t know.
My sister and niece showed up shortly thereafter and had the same if not more intense, reaction that I had. The last time they had seen Mom was three years ago when she was still a vibrant, mobile, young-looking-for-her-age woman.
The rest of the afternoon we played music for her on our phones, read Bible passages, and talked to her even though she didn’t respond much. When she did talk, we had to put our ear as close as we could to her mouth, and even then what she said wasn’t always understood. However, she did manage to convey to my older sister that she didn’t want to die alone. This was told to me later that same day after we had left and were at the hotel. I unthinkingly said, “She better do it fast, then.” We were all scheduled to leave on the 17th. I didn’t really mean it the way it sounded, but there we are. I had no idea.
The next morning she was unresponsive. Nothing would rouse her to consciousness. After we ate lunch
a hospice nurse came in, introduced herself, and told us what to expect with her death. She gave us a pamphlet we would refer to later on describing what the body would do during the final stage. Now there was a timeline, albeit a vague one, from minutes to hours to a day, but it was out now. There was no taking it back, no denying it, no feebly childish hopes that her pulmonary fibrosis would get better or magically go away (no, it doesn’t), that she could stay around just a little while longer.
Our vigil began in earnest. Sometime during the early evening, the nurse on duty sent us a care tray of hot coffee, water, and shortbread cookies. I ate a packet of cookies and drank some water. I didn’t need caffeine to stay awake. I remember reading Psalm 23 aloud to her. I hope she heard. I had my hand on her left shoulder, and my niece clasped her hand. I don’t remember what my sister did, but I know she was right there.
We all watched as her struggle to breathe became more shallow and less frequent. At one point we erroneously thought she had passed. I went to fetch the nurse and see if she could hear breathing or a heartbeat. She walked into the room and was pulling the stethoscope off her neck when my mother suddenly took in a deep ragged breath. We all jumped, even the nurse, and she said, “There you are!” and promptly left again. We kind of chuckled, needing some relief from the unrelenting tension. It wasn’t long afterward that she stopped breathing for real. She went Wednesday night at around 9:30 pm, as helpless and frail as when she entered this life 87 years prior. It was one of the most intense experiences of my life and I feel honored to have been there. My mommy didn’t die alone. And for once in my relationship with her, I feel I did something completely, totally right. We were there.
…..
Sometimes I can go about my business and forget what happened while other times the pain and loss slam into me hard.
I remember her driving me all the way to Morro Bay on a Saturday just because, or how she used to laugh at fart jokes, or how I disappointed her because I was a stoner delinquent when I was in my teens and couldn’t be bothered to graduate from high school, or how she loved dining out. It’s all there in high definition. But this latest memory, the time we spent in Room #179* at Bakersfield Dignity Memorial Hospital, will probably be the most intense. Not when she kissed my scraped knee when I was learning to ride a bicycle and I was crying, or when she danced to “Kansas City” by Fats Domino, or when she held my daughter for the first time.
I am surprised that I’ve written about her passing in such detail, but it just started flowing out of me. I feel it’s a cleansing experience, even though I have abbreviated it. And yes, I have cried a lot while writing this post, and yes, it has taken me several days.
I don’t think death and the accompanying sorrow should be such a taboo subject. It’s a part of this experience we call life. We shouldn’t feel so damned uncomfortable…but, alas, we do. It is a deeply personal process and how we respond to it is as individual as, well, you. I remember throughout the whole process healthcare professionals would always say “There is no right or wrong answer.”
So, dear reader, if you’re still here, I thank you for your diligence. This has not been a happy entry. I would exhort you, like most people who have lost someone close, to appreciate what you have. As James Taylor sang “Shower the people you love with love”. Can’t go wrong with that.
*She was moved from #558 to #179 the day before we traveled back down there.