On Mourning

I was doing it wrong, and I knew it. It was one year ago today, my mom had just died, but I wasn’t crying.

“Something’s wrong with me,” I confided, oh so quietly, to those closest to me, a week later. They assured me there was no right way, no wrong way, to grieve. That it would come, when it was time, when I was ready.

Apparently, that time arrived at 9 PM last night. I was thinking about what state of mind I was in a year ago, waiting for The Call to tell me she had passed away.

The dam burst, and finally, the river of tears flowed. I wasn’t just missing her any more – I was mourning.

All day today, I’ve gone through it all again, remembering the sad details of the time between her stroke and her death, writing them out. If I don’t remember them, and acknowledge them, how can I let them go?

I was in a very precarious state, physically, by the time my mom died, two months after a hemorrhagic stroke. Those months were a nightmare, watching my strong, capable, and independent mom being broken into a mere shell of herself. I suspect the mourning got put on hold, subconsciously, so I could recover from the toll the physical, emotional, and mental stress had taken on my own fragile body. Those of us with ME, CFS, fibromyalgia, etc, have to carefully and frugally measure out our energy use, our spoons. (See Always Counting Spoons if you aren’t familiar with this concept).

But there was little I wouldn’t do for my mom. She had always been there for me, through my many mistakes in life, always ready to pick me up and help me out. We were best friends who spoke most every day, and had no secrets.

She was also a real rarity, because she believed in me despite my illness, and supported me both emotionally and financially.

You might think any mother would support a sick daughter, but that’s very sadly untrue when the illness is ME (myalgic encephalomylitis), CFS (chronic fatigue syndrome), fibromyalgia, chronic Lyme. They are not understood even by many doctors other than a few specialists, and family, well, most family members don’t take the time to try to understand. I have a lot of friends ill with the same things, and very few have the support of their families, or only part of the family.

I was so very lucky, to have my mom until she was 89. She was still telling me about any article or show she saw where my illnesses were mentioned, still reading articles about it that I posted on Facebook, trying to understand better. She still listened to me moan and groan and complain when I needed to.

I had her, and I have my youngest daughter, who has a milder version of these damn diseases. She’s my caregiver, my best friend, my defender, intelligent and brave, and with a bit of her grandmother’s iron spine. You don’t want to piss her off anymore than you did my mom – her grandmother taught her well. I have my son-in-law here, too, who very bravely accepted the weight of being part of our family. It’s not an easy thing, being a caregiver to someone like me, mostly bedbound. But such is the power of Love.

I couldn’t get through this life without them, and I don’t know how my friends who have no family support do it.

I’ve been blessed, that’s for sure, and I’m so very thankful for my mom’s steadfast love and support. I will always love her, and I know she’s watching over me, loving me still.

Love never dies.

Shores of Avalon

Reflecting…
In some ways, I was relieved when my mom finally passed away. Seeing her the way she was, two months after a hemorrhagic stroke, ripped my heart out every day. She’d had the stroke in early September, and the months since had been filled with far too few ups, far too many downs, and devastating punches to the gut.

She was only affected physically a little, and that mostly passed. But her mind… That bore the brunt of the bleeding in her brain. That is what haunts me.

Dementia was just a word, without real meaning, until I watched, from a distance, as she slid further and further away. I wanted to go to her, in Houston, but I’m homebound with my own illnesses, and there was no way I could travel.

There were endless phone calls, trying to talk to her, and talking to her doctors, nurses, and my brother and sister-in-law, who were there. Hours spent researching, trying to understand the possibilities for recovery.

More hours went into hacking into her patient record at the hospital, pouring over the flood of lab and test results, learning a whole new area of medical terminology, translating that for family, and relaying it all to my eldest, who was deployed to the middle east.

I’d already spent 4 years being my mom’s patient advocate from a distance, intervening with doctors, calling, faxing, emailing, tracking her labs, researching her meds and demanding changes from doctors who were too busy to spend the time I was.

She was 89 years old. Every problem was written off as “just getting older.” How angry that still makes me. If they’d paid more attention, they’d worked harder to control her blood pressure, and sent her to the ER when her BP was incredibly high and she had a headache, the outcome could have been different.

After the stroke, my brother would bring the iPad to the hospital, so we could do video chats. They were difficult from the start, seeing my mom’s confusion, anxiety, distress, and fear. She didn’t understand that she’d had a stroke, where she was, or what was happening. Sometimes she knew me, sometimes she didn’t. The nurses said she was often combative, angry and afraid, cussing them out while they tried to help.

As the days turned to weeks, getting her to eat, drink, and take her meds, became nearly impossible. She went from hospital to nursing facility and back numerous times, with new issues cropping up, one after the other. She often would wander around, and had many falls.

The last video chat we had haunts me. My brother propped the iPad up on the table, so I felt like I was there, but I don’t think she even looked at me. Her face was gaunt, and her always beautiful skin was marred by large deep purple and green bruises, with more on her arms and legs, from her falls. Her eyes stared blankly, empty except for anger when my brother tried to get her to eat her meds-laced ice cream.

She wasn’t there. The spark of Love and Life that animated my mother, spilled from her over me for my whole life, was gone. I knew she would be appalled at her condition, and would never have wanted to go through all this. I cried that day, to see her so diminished, bruised and battered, who had always been so strong and imposing.

Making the decision to put her in the gentle hands of hospice care that day was easy. The doctors now said she had terminal dementia. Hospice would see that she was comfortable, allowed to slip away naturally.

The day after hospice took over, she went to sleep, and became unresponsive. My brother showed me her nice room on chat, with all her furniture, as she laid still, on the bed. No more IV’s, no more prodding her to eat, no more distress. Resting gently, she slipped deeper and deeper into a coma.

I thought she would pass away quickly after that, but she was stubborn to the end. Every night I went to sleep, so lightly, in case The Call came in. A kind-hearted hospice nurse told me it could “be a while,” and he had one patient who went 33 days in a coma, in what is basically a hibernation state. I had no idea someone could linger that long without water or an IV.

The waiting was hard, and very busy, helping to arrange a funeral in her tiny home town of Loop, TX, and keeping folks aware of developments.

My ill body was not taking all this well, and I was having some major physical issues. Too little sleep, too much laying in bed wondering how she was in the middle of the night, too little eating… I tried desperately to stabilize my own system.

My mom lasted 6 days. The Call I’d been expecting came moments after I woke up on my own, alarmed. We’d both always known when the other was going to call, and this final call was no exception.

Gazing over the mountains my mom had loved so much, I watched the dawn light creep into the day, as I had just enough time to say a final goodbye.

I felt her then, and I’ve felt her presence many times since then. And I always will.
She was truly my guardian angel in life, and nothing’s going to stop her from continuing to look out for me.

This, I know.