One of my dearest friends called me this morning to tell me she's on her way to Phoenix because her mother is dying. Jackie's mom hasn't been doing well for some months, but apparently she's taken a downturn in the last week or so and isn't expected to last much longer.
Jackie talked to her mom on Sunday and told her she would be over on Thursday. Jackie's mom replied, "Well, you know, I'm leaving. I may not be here."
"I know, Mom. If you have to leave before I can get there, it's okay."
"Okay. But I have to leave; I have to leave soon."
Losing a parent changes your life -- obviously. Even when it's expected, even when it's blessing, it's just weird. You are losing someone you have known your entire life. If you have a good relationship, the loss is evident. But even if you have a poor relationship, you have a loss as well. You've lost the hope of reconciling, of ever having a good relationship.
My mom died five years ago from complications of Alzheimer's. We had placed her in a group home near my home in San Diego when my dad became too ill to care for her. Mom had been battling dementia for a number of years, but was okay in her own apartment in Atlantic City with a caretaker coming in four or five days a week. Then my dad nearly died, and Diane and I were too busy caring for him to be able to care for her. Dad left his apartment in March in an ambulance and didn't see it again until August. That's a whole story by itself, but Diane and I flew back and forth for all those months to take care of him. We did two-week shifts and would pass somewhere in the air. My dad's survival was a miracle. Even his cardiologist calls him "Lazarus."
Mom was in the home for a year and a half before she died, and I hated visiting her. Isn't that horrible to say? But it's true. It depressed me beyond belief -- she would be so pleased to see me. She'd ask me where I'd been and wouldn't remember that I'd been there the day before. She'd tell me she remembered living somewhere else that she liked, but didn't know where it was. She wanted to know where I lived and if she could go with me. It was just so sad. Even thinking of it still gives me a knot in my stomach and I get teared up.
By the time we placed her, Mom had no ability to understand where she was or why, what day it was, or even who I was. But, she never failed to recognize me, although she didn't know my name or that I was her daughter. When I'd go see her, she'd be so pleased to see me. I could usually get her to shower or do whatever the caretakers needed her to do.
Then my mom decided she was done. One day in June, she got out of the chair she was sitting in, said, "I want to take a nap," and lay down on the floor. No one at the home could get her up. She just fell asleep and refused to be awakened.
She spent about a week in the hospital while they ran tests for everything they could think of. They couldn't find anything to explain her sudden decline. She wouldn't eat, would barely drink. We had the option of putting her in a care facility with a feeding tube, where she'd be tied to the bed so she couldn't pull her tube out or get up to walk; or we could put her on hospice and return her to the home. I couldn't imagine my mom wanting to live on a feeding tube with her arms and legs tied down, so we pulled everything and sent her back to the home to die.
(to be continued)
No comments:
Post a Comment