On the Monday before Thanksgiving, 2010, My Precious Mother took a fall, landing her in the ER followed by a hospital admission. While an in-patient she received a rapid fire succession of diagnosis. The sum total of which was Stage 4 Aortic Stenosis, when coupled with her decreased lung function, due to 83 years of asthma suffering, the outlook was grim, at best. Prognosis: 6-12 months which would be filled with medication adjustments, fluid build-up, and assorted other symptoms ranging in severity and urgency.
The good news... Mother was released from the hospital on Thanksgiving Day, which provided the opportunity to spend some time with the family she loved enjoying a traditional meal. Home Health Services began the following day...Nurse Tech, Occupational & Physical Therapy, & a weekly visit from an RN.
Exactly three weeks later on Dec. 16, 2010, despite our best efforts, she returned to the hospital due to fluid build-up. After seven very emotional & frustrating days, Mother returned home on Dec. 23, 2010. The prognosis remained the same, 6-12 months, but this time we had paperwork for hospice care.
Christmas Eve festivities were relocated to Mom & Dad's house...quite the feat but thanks to my wonderful husband & children the result was wonderful! An evening of family and fun, just like every Christmas Eve since Mother's childhood. We came together to share food, laughs, gifts, and the blessings of family! Just like Mother wanted, each and every year.
On Dec. 26, it was back to reality and back to business. The hospice personnel filed through the house, introducing themselves, explaining their role within the team, and offering every support imaginable. Simply said, they are incredible folks who plop themselves into your life at the worst of times and somehow find a way to do so with the utmost compassion and minimal intrusion. They are incredible!
6 days later, January 1, 2011, Mother's Heavenly Father Called Her Home...
Death is not glamorous...often coming like a thief in the night... these are things we have all heard time and again but if our departure from this world, to the everlasting life we are promised, could be scripted, I know Mother would have written hers exactly as it was.
At 6:05 am, I received a telephone call from Mother, she had not been able to sleep and her chest was feeling tight. I hurried out of the house, standing in her kitchen in less than 20 minutes. As instructed previously, I telephoned the hospice nurse and followed her medication directions. Shortly after Michael's arrival at 7:30am, the four of us - Mom, Dad, Michael & myself - sat at the kitchen table sharing breakfast and conversation about the holiday festivities and the joy of the grand-& great-grandchildren. By 8:30am, Mother was feeling a bit better, due to the medication, I am sure, and decided to rest. She proceeded to the bedroom where we helped her prop with pillows and settle in.
The next hour came in a flurry, unexpected and fast progressing...
At 9:30am, I notified hospice of Mom's passing...She had left this world wrapped in the arms of her only child and her husband of 63 years... Dad & I cried as she drew her last breaths, cried for our loss...for the emptiness her passing left in our lives, for the denial of the additional time we desired with her. Over the next few hours the house filled with grandchildren, siblings and friends who loved Mother as if she was family.
The hospice bereavement team arrived took care of the details and allowed us to grieve, together in the home mother loved with so many of the people she loved. Death is not like the movies...the pain is like none I have ever known...but the details of mother's passing...in her own home with the people she loved and loved her has a certain comfort and brings a portion of peace.
Over the next three days we moved through the motions of the traditional southern-style visitation and funeral, being visited by friends bearing food, flowers, mementos, and wonderful stories of time spent with Mother over nearly 83 years of life...All the while my mind would drift back to the moments of her passing...Mother had accepted her prognosis, she was a life-long Christian who believed God's Promise of a Life-Everlasting. She had shared with us her belief and her peace of what was to come when she left this material world. She feared prolonged suffering in her final days, had asked God to spare her such a fate. I believe he answered her prayers with a resounding "Yes!" He granted her prayer, answered with an affirmative response, he acknowledged her commitment to him and the lifestyle he commands, saying Yes, you have done as I have commanded and for that I will reward you this.
Six months...I can hardly believe it has been six months! I still reach for the phone to telephone her with updates & news or think I can't wait to tell this one to Mom, they are fleeting thoughts, reality suspended for mere seconds. We have been forced to resume day to day life, much has happened...Dad has grieved, renewed some old friendships and created some new ones, Owen turned 2, Marlie had her first Birthday and Taylor celebrated his 21st, Michael & I saw our 26th Anniversary, Travis attended his first High School Prom & has a steady girlfriend, Brandi has begun building a business, I had a massive heart attack followed by stent placement, we have mourned the loss of several friends and additional family members. As is often said, "Time waits for no one". A true statement, indeed.
There are very few things that do not lead me to thoughts of Mom. I am learning to handle those thoughts with a smile, focusing on fond memories and good times, fewer tears and sorrow. The loss is as great as ever, the grief is finding a place.
I begin each day with a prayer, I am always careful to include my desire that when he calls me home, the Lord, Our God, will say to me, as I believe he did to Mother... "Well, done, thou good and faithful servant" (Matthew 25:21) and it will be then that we meet again on the heavenly shores...you see, I know we will be on "the shores" because Mother loved the beach!
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