Motherhood

My mother passed away this morning.

She's been in hospice at a nursing home since October.

The past two weeks, she's been completely out of it.

 

When we saw her on Thursday, she was a corpse,

just skin and bones, unable to move except she did manage to squeeze our hands, which meant she knew we were there.

 

I could write volumes about my mother. She was generous, kind, loving and practical. She coudn't cook worth a darn, but we all got fat enough. She was scrupulously clean, kept her house sparkling and her laundry white in the sunshine.

 

She loved our father. She loved her three kids and she adored her six grandchildren. She always had candy and little presents for the neighborhood children and she held court on her front porch on summer evenings with many of her wonderful neighbors.

 

But Mom was basically shy and reserved. She did nothing to put herself forward or stand out from the crowd. I think she had low self-esteem, but I knew she was pretty damned smart and beautiful. Beautiful enough to marry my good-looking father!

 

I will miss her. Everytime something happens, I want to run upstairs to call her and tell her. I won't be doing that any more.

I just hope she's listening....

 

                        Together again, at last.

Ages ago, my dear uncle known as Bourbon John, taught me the difference between a pessimist and an optimist. The story he told still remains in my head. According to John:

 

A mother of twin boys was worried because they were so different from each other. She feared there was something wrong with both of them, so she took them to a psychiatrist to see if he could figure out what it was that made them so different. After all, they were twins.

 

The doctor examined each boy, gave them numerous expensive tests for several weeks before coming to this conclusion.

 

"Madam, you have one son who is an optimist while the other is a pessimist."

 

The woman didn't really know what that meant, but she begged the doctor to come up with a cure for both of them. "Please, doctor! Help my sons! Can you do anything for them?"

 

The doctor scratched his chin and thought for awhile, then abruptly nodded his head. "Yes, madam, I can think of a possible way to cure both boys." And a date was arranged for the next, and supposedly final, appointment.

 

He arranged two large rooms. The first, he had brought in all the wonderful things a boy could want--new toys, cake and ice cream, balloons, you name it, it was there. Into this, he put the pessimist child.

 

In the other room, he had a farmer lay down a carpet of horse manure, nothing else. He loaded the optimist into this room.

 

After two hours, he went back to the first room. It saddened him to find the child sitting on the floor, crying. "What's wrong? You had everything a boy could want in here. You should be happy!"

The boy wiped his snotty nose and replied, "The balloons all popped. The cake wasn't chocolate, the soda pop was flat, and all the toys broke too easily."

The doctor harrumphed and nodded sadly.

 

Going to the room full of manure, he opened the door and found the optimist child laughing and prancing around the room, searching everywhere. To him, the doctor said, "Child, what could you possibly be glad about? This room is dismal!"

 

The boy looked up from his search and said simply, "Well, doctor, with all this horse shit on the floor, I figured there had to be a pony in here somewhere."

 

And that, my friends, is the best definition of optimism and pessimism I've ever heard.

I pass this on to you at the start of the new year.

I hope 2018 is full of manure and you keep on looking for that pony!

This is supposed to be a joyous time of year. All the lights, the magic, the thought of Christ's birth and the renewal of all the delights of my childhood.
These things are all crap to me.

My mother is dying.

She has been in hospital to rehab center to nursing home to hospice in the past two months.

It hurts so much to see her slowly dissolving--fading--losing her Anne and becoming a mindless vegetable. Sometimes she remembers stuff. Most of the time, she doesn't. She's not eating. I think she may be trying to starve herself.

She has a DNR. That means do not resuscitate. In other words, nothing will be done to prolong her life other than making her comfortable with drugs and changing her diaper.

Can you believe a person can slip so far downhill in such a short time?

Her memory is about the same as a goldfish's about now and that hurts. It appears that she can start to say something and before it is out of her mouth, it is gone.

My mother has always been so good to me--to all of us in the family. She never put herself forward, never took from us what she felt belonged to us. She gave up luxuries but made sure we had what we needed and wanted.

And now this wonderful spirit is gone.

The past 97 years she has spent on this Earth are only represented by us.
We'd better now screw up our lives so she can be proud of all we achieve.

Waiting

 

 

In the rehabilitation center or nursing home, so many people are in bed, sitting in wheelchairs...waiting. They wait for someone to take them to the bathroom. They wait for the meal tray or to go to the dining hall if they can wheel themselves there. They wait to see the doctors. They wait for their loved ones to come visit them.

They wait.

 

There's another kind of waiting.

 

The people who are ready to die, but seem to be waiting for someone or something else to visit or happen. Most of them really are just hanging in for fear of disappointing their loved ones and the trouble that their deaths will cause.

 

But then, I think, there are those who are waiting for a love long passed to come get them.

 

I think my mother is there now, waiting for my father to come to take her away.

 

 

in college

One day back in the late 60s, I happened to be hitching a ride back to my off campus room from a sorority sister and noticed an open notebook on the floor of her car. The page on display was a series of the word "shit", neatly lined up, row after row.

I guess she was upset about something.

 

When I commented on it, she smiled and told me that there were many other pages filled just like that one was.

 

I haven't ever resorted to such a display...though I do write that word at the end of many sentences because, by nature, I have become an angry woman and this is my way of venting.

 

Now...using the word many, many times...or using it once in full caps...or just using it once, standing alone...which displays the most vehemence?

 

Shit.

 

I can't really say.

 

It just feels better after I've written it.

 

Down in the dumps

I can't call it depression as depression is far more serious a condition and it just never goes away. What I am feeling will go away, eventually.

Just not right away.

When I need it to go away.

 

Somehow, I can't seem to get my ducks in a row. I am a very ducks in a row person. I like things planned--not years in advance--but manageable. Like one, maybe two things per day that I have to absolutely MUST do. Preferably one in the morning, after 10 and one in the afternoon, around 2.

 

Being stuck with two things happening simultaneously creates problems and makes my stomach hurt.

 

I have to figure out how to divide myself, like a planeria or something. One of those microscopic life forms that can split in two.

 

However I try, I just can't manage to do that.

 

My stomach hurts. I'm exhausted. I'm sad. I'm angry. Those things I can have all at the same time.

 

I don't want to be like this.

 

 

Everything is always about me

Well, isn't it supposed to be?
I mean, why do I write this bloody blog if it isn't to let off steam or comment on something weird I have thought about or witnessed?

I noticed that I had not blogged since late June. It's not that nothing has happened to me since then, it's just that, well, frankly, I've been too sick to write anything other than piddly comments on FB.

I've been hospitalized with Contact Pneumonia. That means that, unlike the other times I've had pneumonia, this one I got from someone else. Possibly from Elyse who picked up the germs at a convention she went to. The kids say that everybody gets sick after cons. I believe them. Everybody here got colds. I got a worse cold.

This pneumonia is the kind that can kill.
Just my luck

We were supposed to be on our way to NC. Instead, we were first at a critical care place then to the emergency room at the local hospital, then upstairs in the ICMU. I think the M stands for the fact that I could walk and didn't need the bedpan, but I am not sure.

Shots in my belly. Antibiotic drip for three days. IV tube in hand as they couldn't find another place it would go. Horrible tasteless-without-salt food that I didn't eat much of. In fact, I dropped 12 pounds.

This wasn't fun. I couldn't walk far, couldn't breathe well, had to do all these things through the night when somebody came in to get blood or give me a shot of Prednisone (sp) or anything else they needed from my body.

I am sort of over this. Still exhausted, still have to stop from walking too fast, still feeling punk.

Then, last night, I got sick again...this time, some virus or something that had me in the toilet for four hours. Not fun. Really not fun.

I have to get better, fast. Herb is having shoulder surgery on 9 11 and he will be out of commission for six weeks at the very least. I gotta be there to help him and maintain the household.

Oh, boy.