Larry if Coming Home!

This week has been very emotional and demanding. One evening I thought we were losing mom and then she has had a couple of days where I find it hard to believe she is going to die. The biggest change is her eating habits. She has a decent breakfast but little else throughout the day. If I do manage to get her to eat, I end up feeding her. You would think she would protest to this humbling act but, no…she acts as if this is the way it’s supposed to be. I have to admit that feeding your own mother is quite a reality check.


Nighttimes had been really going well. We would block off the hallway with a small table, put a silk plant on it with a nightlight, making it easy to direct her back to her bedroom if she got up to use the hall bathroom. It’s been great. Then, the other night I heard groaning in the living room and found my mom standing in her nightgown in a type of trance. She had moved the table blockade and lost her way. I have no idea how long she had been wandering around. I gently took her back to her bedroom and by this time she had worked herself up to a spell of tremors and gasps of air. It was awful.

I stroked her arm and climbed in bed with her and soon she calmed down. She got very quiet and we talked and sang songs and prayed. Then her breathing got very erratic as she was going back to sleep. Two deep breaths and then no breath for a few seconds…she would groan. This went on for a while. “Mom, Larry is coming home in three days”. “No, tell him not to come” she whispered. “He’s on the way, can you hold on?” “Tell him goodbye for me.” Oh my goodness..is she dying? “Mom, do you want to record a message for him?” I tried to tape something be she couldn’t talk clearly without her dentures and she was very faint. “Mom, you can make it, you can see Larry, but you have to eat and drink water.” Earlier I had tried to get her to drink some water and take some Ativan to calm her spell but she absolutely refused. But now she agreed to drink and eat for Larry’s sake. I gave her some water and I suddenly felt a wave of emotions and told her I had to cry. “Okay, we’ll cry together.” I told her how much I loved it that I could have her here at home with me and I loved every minute I could spend with her. Soon she fell asleep.

I went back to the bedroom and told Michael asking him if I should call Sylvia and continued to cry. It was the first time I had allowed myself to grieve the slow death my mom was experiencing.

The next day, the Hospice nurse came for a visit to take vitals and mom had eaten a good breakfast and had just finished a snack. Her vitals are perfect. That evening we had a repeat of her moving the blockade in the hallway and waking me creating another memory in the early dawn. This time it was less emotional and I was able to get her back to bed easier. She has been steadily doing better with getting some nutrition and having the hope of seeing Larry.

Friday afternoon Michael suggested we go for a drive together so I could make a Pizza run. Surprisingly, Mom was all for it. She got all ready and when she got in the car she was so excited. We came to a mountain road and she said, “Turn here, just for fun”. So we took a nice drive in a mountain community noticing the large boulders and flowering bushes. The way the sun danced on the metal on the guard rails. We enjoyed the large oak trees covering the road like a tunnel. Then she made a statement that I will never forget. “When God opens your eyes, everything is beautiful!” Coming back down the hill, she said, “I will never see that again.” We stopped to get her some flowers at the local corner stand and she was thrilled to pick out a dozen pink roses. She hugged the wrapped bouquet all the way home

Last night we finally figured out a stronger, heavier sofa table to set up for a blockade and we did not put on the night light. We have a motion detector night light in the hallway that would help her find her room. I didn’t sleep well though, wondering if suddenly not being free to come and get me would cause some trauma, so I kept waking up and checking on her. (She decided she did not like the monitor in her room with the infrared. To her it meant danger, so I couldn’t check on her with the monitor. Michael and I tried to disguise it in a silk plant wreath over her mirror. But she still managed to disconnect it.) Around 5:30 a.m. I heard a rap a tap, tap and it woke me up. I found mom on the other side of the table and we chatted like it was a completely normal way to visit at 5:30 in the morning. She had a big story about a widow who was close to a hundred and Mom felt this lady was dying. Mom wanted to teach her how to call her kids by tapping on the wall. Mom wanted me to promise to take her to visit her. “Okay Mom but right now I am still so sleepy, can we talk about it more in the morning? I want to go back to bed, okay?” She gave me a kiss and said okay and put herself back into her bed. I was able to sleep again too.

I will sleep much better tonight knowing that the new blockade was acceptable for her and did not cause any distress.

Mom is wearing her dentures less and less, not wanting to leave the house or have too many people over at a time. Yet, she is amazingly compliant when it comes to the Hospice staff. A gentle, small framed caretaker came and bathed her and we turned the experience into a spa treatment. Her nurse is a really sweet gal named Crystal who is a Southern gal and they have really bonded with the three visits they have had together so far.

This morning my sister kindly came to take over caretaking so Michael and I could go to church. She reported that mom spit out her oatmeal and refused to eat. She managed to get her to drink some water. I have a strong feeling after my mom gets her visits from her two out-of-town sons, and says her goodbyes, it won’t be long before she goes to her home in heaven that has been being prepared just for her. Right before she took her nap today, the last thing she said was, “No parties”. “Okay, mom, no parties today. Goodnight.”