Four years ago(give or take a few days) my mother died. I had planned a very profound post to mark the occasion, but the words that had always been there for me, failed me. It seems I've already used them all up and now I can't quite capture the things as accurately as I once did. The point I want to leave you with is this. You don't have enough time.
When mom was in the final stages of her cancer battle, we all(me, sis, mom) sat around her kitchen table and we talked about life, and death and how hard the battle had become. What we didn't know at that time was, she had already stopped fighting. This was in February or March.
Did you know that there is a lifetime maximum amount of chemotherapy that a person can have? I didn't. Mom had fulfilled her lifetime maximum for chemo sometime in the previous months. We knew none of this, of course. She and her doctor were now into the pain management and maintenance part of her cancer, which was now terminal. She opted not to share the information with the rest of the family...but I knew. I knew that time was running out. In my head I figured she had until Christmas. How I came up with that ...I'm not sure. It just seemed like the furthest date from where I was, so therefore it was more comfortable to me.
After that it seemed like we visited mom every month... either I or my sister would make the trip down for a weekend... sometimes we both would. She was fading before our eyes and still telling us it was the treatments that were weakening her. There were some scary incidents where she passed out and then there was the time that she lost her way going to bed one night. She couldn't remember which bedroom was hers and she stood in the hallway and cried because all she wanted was to sleep.... but she couldn't remember which room was hers. Her husband heard her crying...and asked her what was wrong. He told her everything would be ok, and he got her into bed. In the morning she didn't remember the incident. Must have been her medication, we all thought. She was in the hospital a couple weeks later. I can't even remember why. My daughter and I came down to visit and she assured us she was fine, just her medication needed regulating.
In June the whole family came down to visit. There was a wedding and luckily my children came too. It would be the last time they saw her. She didn't go to the wedding. She didn't get off the couch all weekend.
We had planned another trip down a few weeks later, the weekend of July 17th... but my aunt called my father and bonus mom and told him we needed to come sooner. We left the next day.
Nothing in this world can prepare you for the end stages of a life. She had been responsive the previous day, but fell into a coma overnight. When we got there she was unresponsive, laying on her side with a respirator. She looked like a baby bird. Her hair was like soft feathers on her head, her once deep green eyes were not fully closed, they were the slitted eyes of the deeply asleep...but the color was a cloudy grey. I expected her to be sitting up in bed, chastising us for our unnecessary worry. Not this.
The death you see on television and in the movies is not what its really like. Its not a pretty process. Its a natural process that everyone will go through. There was a very nice ex-hospice nurse that took my sister and I aside and told us what the next days would bring. Signs to look for, things that a human goes through. She told us that sight is one of the first things that a person loses, hearing the last. So we talked to her, said our goodbyes, had private conversations with her... We stayed in her room with her.. trying to stay awake. I passed out on the other bed in her room(the hospital refused to put another patient in with her because they knew that these were her final hours and they gave us that privacy). at 1 o clock in the morning a nurse came in to take blood and it agitated mom... she whined and moved a little in her sleep. It woke me, and my sister was livid. Why did they need to cause her that unnecessary pain? we couldn't stand it. It was over quickly but we found the nursing supervisor and asked her if anything like that was necessary. she apologized profusely and said that no further incidents like that would occur. They would just check vitals and keep her medicated, pain free and comfortable.
Family members came and went, said their goodbyes. None of us had a real meal so the next day a bunch of us went out to the cracker barrel across the street for dinner. We checked with the hospice nurse and she said we would be safe to leave for a bit. A few more family members stayed behind. We had a really nice dinner...strangely enough we told stories about her growing up and heard some stories and mom would have loved it.
My aunt had made arrangements for her pastor to come and visit with us when we got back to the hospital... As many family members as would fit in the room formed a circle around mom... and the pastor led us in a prayer. We held hands and the room got very peaceful and warm and there was a big gush of air...and it was over. All I could say was... "but I thought there would be more time..." But there wasn't any more time.
Her time was over and I thought about all the time that I had wasted.. All of the times I let someone else tell me what was important to do with my time and how I should spend it and all of the times I let someone else ruin the plans I had to visit with her and the things I missed out on with her because of that someone.
I can't believe I let myself be manipulated and controlled like that. Never again did I let that happen to me. I wish someone had told me what I will tell you now.
Don't do it. Don't give up on something you want to do some day. Don't wait. Don't let relationships die because you don't have time. Don't let someone come between yourself and your family. Don't think there is more time to make things right or heal a hurt or tell someone how much they mean. There isn't any more time.
It runs out long before you're finished counting the grains of sand in that hourglass and then...it's just over.
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