Turning The Wheel
Sep. 17th, 2023 06:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mama_kestrelBack in June, my mom had a stroke. It was her fourth, and while she recovered well from the previous three, this one was different. This one set off three days of continuous seizures before the neurologist could get them under any kind of control. This one put her in neuro ICU for two weeks, then in an acute care hospital for another six weeks to get her off the ventilator. She's 89. This time, she is not coming back.
She came back to the nursing home where she's been living since December 2020, but she no longer has the balance even to sit up in her wheelchair, and any attempt to move her body, let alone do PT, made her scream. She could (and can) talk a little; she understands what she hears and smiles or frowns appropriately. But she can't open her eyes; can't see the sky that is so important to her, and more and more she's sleeping. It's pretty obvious that she's shutting down.
Last Thursday I signed her up for hospice. She needs pain management more than anything else. Warned of a risk of addiction, I laughed. Why should I worry about addiction now? She's dying; she's by definition not going to have to live with addiction or its consequences.
She's 15 minutes from my house if traffic is bad, so I'm able to spend as much time with her as possible. Sometimes it's a visit; more often it's a vigil, sitting beside her, holding her hand if the can tolerate it, letting her hand rest on mine if the weight of my hand on hers causes pain. Visit or vigil, it needs to be done.
Sometimes I fall apart and cry. More often I sing; if she's hearing me she enjoys that, and I have a far greater repertoire than I realized. Folk songs, 60s anti war and protest songs, ballads, filk,...I sing until my voice gives out for that day, usually about 3 hours. Every so often I turn around to find the staff standing by the door listening; one woman tells me that when I sing, "the presence of G*d is in the room." I take it as meaning I create an area of peace, which is what I'm trying to do.
I have such mixed emotions. I don't want to let my mother go, though I know I need to. And yet...I have to acknowledge that it will be a relief. She won't be in pain, nor trapped by a failing body. For myself, I have been responsible for her since 1996, and her caregiver since 2010. I will be able to put that down. My family will be able to do things we've back-burnered for years, because of that responsibility. So, like everything else, it's complicated.
But the wheel turns, as wheels will. And my mother's turn is coming to its end.
She came back to the nursing home where she's been living since December 2020, but she no longer has the balance even to sit up in her wheelchair, and any attempt to move her body, let alone do PT, made her scream. She could (and can) talk a little; she understands what she hears and smiles or frowns appropriately. But she can't open her eyes; can't see the sky that is so important to her, and more and more she's sleeping. It's pretty obvious that she's shutting down.
Last Thursday I signed her up for hospice. She needs pain management more than anything else. Warned of a risk of addiction, I laughed. Why should I worry about addiction now? She's dying; she's by definition not going to have to live with addiction or its consequences.
She's 15 minutes from my house if traffic is bad, so I'm able to spend as much time with her as possible. Sometimes it's a visit; more often it's a vigil, sitting beside her, holding her hand if the can tolerate it, letting her hand rest on mine if the weight of my hand on hers causes pain. Visit or vigil, it needs to be done.
Sometimes I fall apart and cry. More often I sing; if she's hearing me she enjoys that, and I have a far greater repertoire than I realized. Folk songs, 60s anti war and protest songs, ballads, filk,...I sing until my voice gives out for that day, usually about 3 hours. Every so often I turn around to find the staff standing by the door listening; one woman tells me that when I sing, "the presence of G*d is in the room." I take it as meaning I create an area of peace, which is what I'm trying to do.
I have such mixed emotions. I don't want to let my mother go, though I know I need to. And yet...I have to acknowledge that it will be a relief. She won't be in pain, nor trapped by a failing body. For myself, I have been responsible for her since 1996, and her caregiver since 2010. I will be able to put that down. My family will be able to do things we've back-burnered for years, because of that responsibility. So, like everything else, it's complicated.
But the wheel turns, as wheels will. And my mother's turn is coming to its end.
