We are still waiting and life just goes on. You go to work, you pay the bills, buy the groceries, run the kids around.
Then in some unknown out of the blue moment you remember that your sister is still sitting by mom holding her hand being her guardian angel sleeping in a chair and giving up her life pretty much until the last breathe is taken.
She has brought in the Hospice after one of the nurses was going to file an elder abuse report for not feeding an 81 year old woman with dementia and a broken neck. A woman who will never walk again or know who anyone is or have any substance of life left to her. A woman who's one wish was not to go like this. And my sister ( suzie) right by her side her spokesperson through all this. My sister who pretty much raised the other 4 of us since she could walk it seems and is still there giving up her grand kids and her husband to sit and wait and hold the hand of our mother.
She is the one who explains to our sister back east that no there is nothing to do and those small conversations you have had with mom over the past year were good only in your heart as we sat there holding the phone and prompting mom to say something anything while outside in the fresh air in the wheelchair waiting for lunch so we could feed you and watch you slowly lose touch with us. But she hears what she needs to hear and we can't blame her but she needs to know that surgery and a halo are not what mom would want and slowly she listens.
The brother who wants to try to put her in a wheelchair and feed her and wheel her outside. Broken neck brother come on think. If she moves the wrong way she dies period end of life. So we joke about turning ever so slightly and well we are a joking family and life has always been hard and we are used to it and we make him understand. Mostly it's suzie who does all this I am just a Wednesday gal and one day a weekend but not lately and it makes me feel bad that I cannot be there and send sis home and sit and listen and hold hands.
Life should not end like this. You should get some sort of free pass that says " When life is no longer life this pass entitles you to one free death"
No food or ventilators or starving you to death so you can pass out of this life into what follows but no pass and we wait and we starve our mom to death and we hurt and we wish it would end but it won't and we cry when we remember and damn I wish there was a free pass for you mom!
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walkingupslowly, thank you
CK, Hopefully I go up tommorrow and sit awhile I will tell suzie you are thinking of her. She will like that.
Middle aged woman blogging, I guess death is part of life but crap so hard sometimes. Thank you
O'Really, thank you so much for your kindness
I'll keep your Mom in my thoughts & prayers.
We went through an almost identical experience with my dad who also went through hospice care. My mother, sister and I all had differing ideas on how the end of life looked. Even when the decision had been made to discontinue active treatment, there was a lot of second guessing and guilt, as my father had not left us any instructions or expressed his wishes -- we were guessing.
At the worst, the final 8 weeks, we had him moved to an inpatient hospice house. It was that move that allowed us to *breathe* again. We had not realized the extent his terminal illness had overtaken every aspect of our lives, altered relationships, and exhausted our souls. We could never have predicted the feelings that washed over us, changing several times a day.
If I could grant you one wish, it would be a peaceful end.