Just days ago I visited Mom for the last time in this life. I left her after an hour’s visit stretched into an hour and a half, trying to tell her in that brief moment how much she has given me, how much she means to me and our family, and how much I will miss her when she leaves this earth. They’ve now told us she is actively dying.
We’ve dreaded this for some time. This has been punctuated more by the sudden decline in her health and awareness since just a few weeks ago. I suppose that when your 90, one mishap can change the axis of your world and throw the rotation off considerably. And she was active and happy not so very long ago.
She almost fell in her assisted living apartment, catching herself before losing her balance completely but wrenching her back in the process. She reinjured a compression fracture in her spine from a couple years ago, causing extreme pain. Since that day, she’s been in the emergency room, been given an MRI and other tests, then been transported to a rehab unit with medical professionals grasping for ways to ameliorate her pain while recognizing that there were no “good” ways to correct the problem. I guess at 90 your options are also limited.
She is now on a regular dosage of liquid morphine to help her cope with even the slightest movement that could send her into nauseating spasms of hurt. She can’t swallow much and takes liquids only in thickened form on a foam tipped swab. As I dipped one into the thickened gel-like water in the glass on her bedside table, I held it between her chapped lips and set it on her equally chapped tongue, urging her to suck on it like a straw. Sometimes she would. Other times she rolled it around in her mouth but didn’t recognize what it was, even as I coaxed her to swallow some. This was a small thing I could do to help.
There’s not much else I had to offer other than my presence. I’ve been told that’s enough, but it just doesn’t seem to cut it. This beautiful blue-eyed woman has given her entire adult life to her husband and five children and the rest of her family. It seems strange, I hadn’t ever noticed just how bright a blue her eyes were before, but as I sat next to her bed and watched her gaze off toward the ceiling without her glasses, they seemed almost like sky-blue sapphires. They weren’t focused, but they seemed intent on seeing something that I could not.
The day before, I’d had another visit with Mom, and she responded well. I coached her through a video visit with my daughter and her baby—her granddaughter and great-granddaughter. She recognized Samantha and said she wished she could hug the baby. Oh, how I had wished to see that as well. Knowing that she has great-grandbabies she’ll never hold just hurts. The pandemic has caused that; prevented visits with the newest members of the family and thwarted opportunities for generational photos. None of the younger generation has been able to travel, and even if they had, they would not have been allowed that touch this year.
I tried to make the most of my visits with her this week. I hoped to provide relief and soothing to her as she prepares for this transition. I was able to have my two out-of-state brothers join us via video for a few minutes. I read some booklets my sister sent me last week that help to explain this end-of-life process. For a culture that seems to study every stage of life ad nauseum, we certainly seem to leave out the most important instruction of all. After all, none of us gets out of this life without this part.
I played some of her favorite music, read a few scriptures, talked to her about memories of Dad and others who’ve passed away. And while I normally don’t push exhibitions of my faith, I know that Mom is a believer, and there have been no clergy visits. So I prayed. I held her hands, tears streaming down my face, and I prayed that our Lord take her when she’s ready; peacefully, and with no fear or pain. I’m no expert at praying aloud. I was unsure of what I should say, but I know that the message was there in a stilted, awkward fashion.
The hardest part was telling her that I would miss her terribly, yet she should know that it’s ok to let go when she’s ready. My sister and I talked about that. It’s such an ambivalent feeling. How can we say it’s ok? It’s not. I don’t want her to leave me. Yes, that’s selfish, but I can’t imagine not being able to call her, even when I live hundreds of miles away. I don’t want her to feel that I’m finished with her.
Our history encompasses a lifetime of moments that meld together and don’t always come to mind when I wish them to appear. Each one of those days, hours, minutes, even seconds I’ve spent as one of her children has made me the woman I am today. Her compassion when I fell or her aggravation with my adolescent attitude, her cheerleading or her reprimanding, and her soul-mending encouragement or her humor in the face of adversity will forever be mine.
Don’t get me wrong. Ours has never been the kind of Hallmark-moment, well-written Walton drama of life where she knew exactly what to say or I acknowledged the lessons I had learned. We had some extremely trying, frustrating times when we couldn’t communicate at all. If I could apologize for all the hateful things my teenaged self said to her or for the times I ignored her sound advice, I would. And I was just one of five she dealt with daily.
I know others who’ve been here. I’m not the first adult child to face this transition. Some part of me wishes that others had shared their feelings so I could’ve been better prepared. I know it may seem very private, and it is. But it is also part of our common human experience. Each person faces dying differently, and we all deal with our feelings about it differently as well. My hope is that sharing my experience will allow others see that we all struggle, we all question, and we all wonder if this is normal.
Knowing someone is teetering on this precipice not knowing the true timeline is frustrating. This stage could be one day, or it could be several. Waiting from a distance is even more trying. My brother and sister who live in my hometown are spending as much time with her now as possible. They are communicating daily with the rest of us who live states away. Due to the circumstance and hospice care, the nursing home staff has allowed these visits now in spite of the pandemic (with proper testing, interviewing and PPE), and we are very grateful.
Until that phone call, I can sit here and recall those last moments I had with her, and the glimpses she gave me that she is still here for now. She has told me that she loves us with all her heart and soul, and she has also asked her Father to take her home again.
She also told me, “There’s no X in Texas. I’m tired of playing this game.”
I replied, “I know Mom. I hate this game too. It sucks.”
