My mom died yesterday morning. I know there are more polite ways to say this, but I am trying to actually believe that this has happened, so I thought if I just bluntly wrote it down, I might actually believe it.
Two weeks ago tomorrow my mom fell down and hurt her hip. She was taken to the hospital by ambulance and the X-ray said her hip was not broken. I thought we would be taking her home at any moment to take some Motrin and rest.
They decided to do a scan and that showed that she hadn’t “broken” her hip with a typical “break”, but that her hip was more like crushed and needed to be pinned to stabilize it. A big hip surgery was not needed and would be dangerous since my mom had a large aortic aneurysm that we have known about for a few years.
When the surgeon took her last X-ray before surgery, she realized in all of the moving between beds and thrashing around that my mom had done, the “break” had gotten worse. She assured us in the long run, the partial replacement would be better. Instead of 6-8 weeks in a wheelchair, this meant mom would be up and walking some the next day. The surgery was more dangerous for her, more loss of blood, longer time under anesthesia, but if all went well, the good would outweigh the bad.
The surgery began at night. It went on past 10:30 pm. All went well and we left looking forward to coming back the next day to find her up and walking. It was not meant to be.
I look back on the past week and it is still hard to believe the quick decline, the life and death choices, the tests, scans, needles, beeping machines and the trips back and forth to the hospital. Every day I drove there hopeful, each day I left there sad and confused.
I saw my mom agitated and angry to the point of being restrained and I saw her unresponsive and sedate. I could never decide which was worse.
I saw her look at me with fear and anger and love and confusion. I saw her regress to her youth and speak Spanish to the first grade class she had taught in her homeland of Puerto Rico over 60 years ago. Although she thought I was her mom at the time, one of my last memories of her talking was to tell me the staff at the hospital was “stupid” because they didn’t even know they were in Puerto Rico. Of course, we were in Alabama, but she was sure she was “home” with her mother.
After all of the tough decisions, the tests where they found a mass on her liver and other health issues, the hospital and insurance company decided all that could be done had been done. The plan was to move her to a hospice facility. I knew about hospice, but did not know there was a hospice facility.
The plan was to make her comfortable where maybe she would eat. It had been 11 days at that point since she had eaten, although we had done IV nutrition for 5 days. With food she would regain some strength and get better to move to a nursing home. Or she wouldn’t.
When the ambulance guys put her on the gurney to take her, I saw her as they rolled past and it didn’t look like my mom. Although 81 years old, my mom had no wrinkles and a head full of beautiful white hair. But the stricken look on her face changed her features and it scared me.
The hospice people are amazing and kind and caring and everything you would want them to be. They treated her with such dignity, making her comfortable and bringing her back to looking like the mom I knew. When my dad and I were about to leave that evening, I went to stroke her hair, tell her that she would be well take care of and that I would be back in the morning. I told her I loved her, but she never woke up to acknowledge me.
My dad, being my dad (but that is a story for another day) said, “I guess I should say good bye, too” He also went to stroke her hair and pat her head. I’ll never understand their relationship, but as their child I don’t have to understand, I have no right to understand it. For better or worse, they stayed together for 60 years and that is all I can say.
I came home, ate, watched some TV I think and went to bed. About 2 am I woke up with a strange pain in my chest. Then I fell back asleep and had a dream. I dreamed that I went back to the hospice place and there was my mom, sitting up in bed, rosy cheeked, and eating a huge breakfast of eggs and bacon. She was chatting with the nurse as I walked in. I remember feeling that everything would be alright again.
Then the phone rang. I shook myself awake to answer it. The nurse said time was running out if I wanted to try to get there. I threw on my sweats and we headed out. I didn’t make it in time. I have to be reassured knowing she IS somewhere having that big breakfast, chatting with my friends who have gone before.
Life is so short and unpredictable. The last 24 hours have been a blur. I told Tim that I don’t know how to act or what to do. He told me I didn’t have to “act.” But that is what I do, I act. Being “me” right now hurts too much. Having a script, being someone else, feeling emotions as a character are things I can handle. Feeling things as me is a lot harder.
I have felt very convicted the last few days to make the big changes I have been thinking about, but I know I should wait until the grief subsides a bit to do anything. But not too long because life is short and unpredictable.
I’ve seen so many things in the past two weeks, things I want to think about, write about. But again, I need some time. Not too much time because life is short and unpredictable.
I wrote this to tell so many of you what has happened and to thank you for the love and support you have sent my way. I can not imagine what people without a strong church family, without a caring theatre family, without my guys, do when things go wrong. I could not survive without all of you.
I’ll write again soon. Although some of you might not understand writing about personal things like I do, I am a writer. It is what I feel compelled to do. I will write again soon if I can, because life is short and unpredictable.
