Sticking Together

March 15, 2012: What was I saying? Yes, I will move up here now! Here I am.

Mom is in the Hospice House now for pain control. I thought that the moment I arrived, she would be delivered unto me, together with a confusing array of medications which might or might not require me to wake up twice each night to help her take them. So I am getting an easier transition than I thought. Which is good, since the ol’ tum went out of commission promptly upon arrival, necessitating a liquid diet for a couple days and easy proximity to the WC.

I have spent several hours with my mother each day, but today was the longest so far. We hung out for six hours. When Mom is lucid, she is just lucid enough to be dangerous – like, she could potentially try to spend money online or call her financial advisor. She also tried to take a walk without help once, which worked out really poorly as the catheter was tied to the bed frame.

A conversation with Mom can cover a lot of ground these days. She asked me how I think people with a strong awareness of tactile sensation perceive information. She asks me about my father’s death, for which I was present and she was not. I see that she wants to know about how my sister and I will handle her death – both for her sake and for ours. But another day she asked me whether Dad was living in Cambridge, and I had to tell her that no, Dad died. I think that she remembered once I said it.

Then she is asking me whether we have a dog, and who is taking care of it while she is in the hospital. (We don’t have a dog.) And then she said, “Poor parakeet.”

“What parakeet, Mom?”

“The one the mouse is going to catch.”

What do I say to that? So I said, “Poor parakeet!”

She also tells me that she could really improve this unit’s efficiency and operations, if she could only remember what she just thought. At least the fan cord is no longer transmitting data. And she hasn’t mentioned since the weekend how they probably have all of her numbers now because they were spying on her as she was flipping through her address book. Nor has the moose come back to drool on her shoulder. I think the Haldol put those last three away. Good call, Hospice.

My experience with Hospice is matching what anyone who has dealt with Hospice knows: They are all wonderful, caring, sensitive people who have enough time to deal with you and pay attention to your individual situation. Today, a social worker and two doctors sat me down to talk about bringing Mom home, and what that will entail. Someone with her 24/7, managing meds, lots of physical assistance, and trying to help her with her pain and fear.

I’m thankful that I can be here with her, and she expresses her gratefulness to me every single day (except for one day last week when she was hateful, but hey, she is dying, she’s entitled to a hateful day or two). And it is wonderful that Hospice is available, and that they are the caring, whole-person oriented, skillful professionals that they are. And I am getting a lot of support from friends and family and coworkers to be here. But what sank in for me, at the meeting today, was that all of that support and all of the craziness of the last 20 years is really just going to come down to Mom dying. This is a far cry from the visions I had as a kid of our family accomplishing important things and enjoying life together. I can’t say any life is a waste, but it is hard to reconcile the family I thought I once had to “life sucks and then you die.” That was not my plan for us. But the only part of my plan that I can carry out at this time is that our family sticks together. Even if it didn’t always, it does now.