So much going on in life, on so many fronts. One of the core happenings of the last few months has been my mothers passing. Passing is a good word for it. It didn't happen in an instant. It was a slow process. It was like passing a truck on a hill, while you're driving a motor home, with a trailer... Some time around June something happened, she had a fall, broke a vertebrae, and along the way lost of alot of her presence and spirit. We thought it was the pain, or the meds, or the pneumonia or the infection, or the next pneumonia... But after a while, it became more obvious that however she lost it, it wasn't coming back.
I can't even keep track of all the maladies that she fought off - I think there were 4 or 5 bouts of pneumonia, several UTIs, her COPD, Congestive Heart Failure, 3 or 4 visits to the hospital... It was months of her slow passing from here to there - moving "on". It was hard on all of us. On Dad, with his diminished capacity to remember and understand, the change in schedules was tough; it was hard for him to take care of the dog, mom's dog, hard for him to see mom as she faded. It was hard on Delilah in more subtle ways - she always seemed pretty happy around mom, but her behavior became so unstable for a while, lashing out, yelling, thrashing at it all - psychically kicking and screaming about the unfairness of mortality. It was hard on me, for all the time, the energy, the drain of it all.
Towards the end there was only the family Christmas for her to live for - one final gathering of the family. Christmas was her holiday - and she held out for that last hurrah. So, we put it all together. A little Christmas Tree in her room in the care facility, little lights, flowers, cards, reminders. The whole family came together to celebrate a few days after Christmas - the clans from LA, from Oregon, and San Diego, all gathering for her, all spending some moments with her.
Strange the things that trigger. Delilah's counselor suggested that I help Grandma make some hand prints on paper - which we could then give to all the family and grand kids. I happened to go in towards the end of the day, after mom had exhausted her energy, in hopes of having her make hand prints. But I was alone with her, just randomly, no one else was there to help me. So I started trying to get a palm print, but mom was passed out - nearly lifeless even then - and I couldn't manage to control her hand and the pad at the same time. So I settled for a finger, and repeatedly inked the finger, then stamped it on a sheet of paper. Her finger was so frail, and her skin so cracked; and the process of stamping the paper required moving so many things at once, that this simple, silly task reduced me to tears. I didn't want to get the ink on her new pajamas, but she couldn't help me - she wasn't home. I know she would have loved the idea of the art, but she wasn't there to give it, so I had to move her like a puppet...
She died a week later. She had been put under hospice care just a few days before, and had been fading quickly. Jan, my brother's wife, had come to spend some time with her. Suzie, my sister, was flying down from Oregon to be here. Barbara and Delilah and I went up to visit mom, and spend some time with dad. I visited mom before dinner, and she was barely there. She was gurgling, working so hard to breathe. We ate with dad, and returned to his condo. Soon thereafter I got a text from Jan saying that we should come soon. I told dad that we needed to go now. During the 5 minutes or so that it took to walk from the condo to the care unit, I felt sort of an upside down waterfall of energy and wondered to my self if that was mom leaving. When we got there, sure enough, Jan and the hospice nurse were in the hall - "She just passed". We went in to her room, and apparently dad hadn't heard that she had already passed. He put a hand on moms chest, and after a moment said "I don't think she's breathing..." We explained that she had passed, and he slowly walked to the other side of the bed so he could reach her face, and planted half a dozen gentle kisses on her face - the most passion that I had ever seen them share...
For a few weeks, I was her Attorney in Fact, then co-trustee to the trust, and now executor to her will. There are things that you think are going to be hard, things that you simply don't know, and things you think will be easy. Some times you're right. There are things that should be easy but aren't, things that shouldn't be bearable, but some how are. There are things that you wish you could ask for help for and can't, and others, you find magically done before you needed to worry about it. All of this is my life right now. There are things that are just tough - just taking so much energy, and others that just flow. There is love, and there is frustration. There is wonder and there is disdain. And this is in so many aspects of my life - opening my self up to a full spectrum of possibilities of how things may be. I am trying to just be, to just take this moment - study it, be in it, wonder at it, and know that it will pass to the next. To be in a relationship with each moment as a seperate thing. Each moment, passing into the next, on this grand trip of life...
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