My mom would have turned 80 today

[dsc]

but she died in April of 2004 of an infection in a nursing home. While her health was not good she was in the home due to her knee being in need of rehabilitation. She had COPD and emphazema and still smoked so to be fair she virtually certainly would be dead by now regardless. But she went in to the home in not great but seemingly stable health. She got an infection in about a week and was dead of sepsis in a matter of days. I have no idea how many more days, weeks, months, or even years we would have had with her had sepsis not taken her. But regardless I was robbed of some amount of time with her.

I think of this as we are dealing with thousands of these deaths in nursing homes from COVID. Each of those deaths represent a person who was likely in some degree of poor health and elderly. But they virtually certainly had some number of days coming. Every one of those days is a loss that is on some level incalcuable. It has been long enough for me that my memories of her bring joy and not tears more often than not but it took quite some time for that to be true. Thousands of families are on that journey and thousands more will be before this is over.

[Maraya1969]

1. My mom spent the last couple years of her life in one of those places.

They are really invaluable when a person becomes incapacitated and the family cannot take care of them anymore.

I took care of mom for a few months but after she had her last stroke at my house we had to place her somewhere for her own safety.

She died at the end of Feb. I'm glad I was able to still go there until the end. I feel really bad for people who can't visit with their loved ones now.