It's close...

My mom is dying.



I've heard that after childbirth women forget the pain that they endured...otherwise they would never choose to have subsequent children. Maybe our minds protect us from pain...I mean, I know that when we accidentally do things like burn ourselves on the oven or cut ourselves with a knife our body reacts quickly, pulling our hands away from the source of the pain...and if the pain is severe enough our bodies go into shock so we can't feel it.... maybe there is a similar neurological process that happens psychologically.

It wasn't that long ago that my grandmother died. She passed away in September of 2007. Before dying she had battled cancer and those closest to her witnessed the long, torturous ending of her life. I was there when she died, my mother, father, and I were around her when she took her last breath... I remember that it was really hard to go through, but I also remember it was peaceful and I was glad to be with her in that moment... I haven't forgotten the hard pieces of her journey, but I think that my mind has allowed me to think about it in a way that I remember the final moment... not the hellish ones preceding it...

However, through my mother's battle with cancer I have been reminded of those things... My mother's journey has mirrored that of my grandmother's. And while things with my mom to this point have been hard, very hard... there were still things I had forgotten... that this trip has brought back... very vividly...

I had forgotten the disorientation factor... my grandmother, in one of her final hospitalizations, thought that the doctor had come into her room through a solid wall...she couldn't watch television because she felt like the people/things on the tv were in the room with her, sometimes chasing her... when taken for one of her many hospital tests, my grandmother thought she was being punished and taken to the basement for her bad behavior and promised to behave if she didn't have to go... I had forgotten that...

And I had forgotten how she slept with her eyes open...how I would get up to check on her when her breathing changed and I couldn't tell if she was asleep or awake... sometimes she was sleeping, sometimes she was awake... sometimes she would engage in conversation with me and I thought she was looking at someone behind me or to my side.

But... I now remember... and am reliving those experiences...this time with my mom. She is weak... so weak... I got here Friday evening, right after the hospital bed was delivered. The hospital bed was in the corner where the twin bed had been... where mom had been sleeping... and the twin bed, with mom still on it... was in the center of the living room... dad had waited for the mattress on the hospital bed to warm up before transferring mom into it. (He's so sweet.) After a while we decided to move mom... and it was just that.. dad and I moving her... she had no strength to try to help us... and it hit me... how much weaker she had become since my last visit two weeks ago...and as the evening unfolded I was kind of in shock... how does this happen... why? And today has been more of the same.... with a lot more confusion added to the mix... believing a woman on tv was the daughter of her friends stopped by... or thinking that she was being wheeled in a hot dog shaped bed...she's repeating parts of thoughts two or three times before connecting it to another phrase...she is sleeping with her eyes open...and when she's awake has a hard time focusing on whoever it is she is talking to...she barely has enough strength to suck liquid through a straw... it's cruel... this shouldn't happen to anyone.

I don't get it... this is so hard on her....on dad... on me... on my sister... on all who know my mom... and through something like this people say they have faith... that it's part of god's plan... I can't buy into that.

When my mom was first diagnosed... one of my acquaintances said to me... it's only cancer... nobody dies from cancer anymore... you know I think he's right... nobody dies from cancer... people are tortured by cancer, murdered by cancer.... not calmly... I think when someone dies... it means they are no longer alive... when cancer kills someone... it means they are alive but are not allowed to live...

People talk about dying with dignity... I don't think that's possible with cancer.. not like this... there is nothing dignified about this...

Mom is mad about having to give up control of so many things, but she is too tired to be angry...she is mad that we have to lift her on and off the commode needed because she cannot walk to get to the bathroom... she is angry that we try to hold a glass for her as she tries to drink from it... she wants to do it herself.... but she can't. We are trying to let her, but it is hard... today she wanted some lunch and made it know we were not to feed her... but watching her try to muster enough strength to hold her fork was a lot to ask... let alone trying to use the fork to pierce the food that was on her plate...and once she was able to do that... she had a hard time getting it to her mouth...hitting her chin and trying to move her head to get the food into her mouth... it's so hard to not just grab the fork and feed her... and my dad is trying so hard to respect her independence, what's left of it, but he is having a hard time watching that scene play itself out... again and again...but what choice does he have?

My mother is dying....and there is nothing any of us can do....I hope I forget a lot of this...