Lost my mom on Saturday.

[forgotmylogin]

She had horrible lifelong chronic pain from spinal stenosis, COPD, anxiety/depression and stomach problems caused by anxiety and so many pills. A few abortive suicide attempts decades ago due to mental problems - that and dementia runs on her side of the family. She didn't get to dementia, thank goodness I guess.

She spent most of her time in bed for the last several years. We had some happy times, but she had moved in with me about 8 years ago to take care of her before she eventually became immobile. We started as "roomies" and she'd have dinner ready when I got home from my job.

It became hard to get her out of bed to her doctor appointments. I'd reschedule again and again over and over hoping she'd feel better next time. My job did as well as they could accommodating me. I burned through 3 months of FMLA at the beginning of this year until it ran out, then moved to night shift - working at home in my bedroom across from hers - so I'd have freedom to schedule and reschedule doctor appointments.

In between appointments I could get her to go to (she really wanted her pain meds) she went by ambulance to the hospital multiple times for pain/stomach/believing she was having a heart attack or a tumor in her stomach due to the pain. Hospital stabilized her, cured a couple of infections, but found nothing life-threatening. Then she would work to get out of the hospital because she was uncomfortable and wanted to get home to me. Hospital tried sending in-home physical therapy to reduce her pain on top of her pain management (which was just prescribing opioids she wanted and suggesting intra-spinal injections she never wanted.) When she wouldn't participate in home physical therapy, the therapists recommended in-home hospice care. Hospice is a brain-melting gear reversal. Instead of "try to get her to move often, don't give her more pain medication than the limit for the day" it's "keep her resting, keep her comfortable, give her all the morphine every hour, it's better if she's sleeping and it's okay if she doesn't communicate."

My aunt was on in home hospice for two years - no spinal problems, just bad lungs and COPD; she still walked around, watched TV with her family, sneaked cigarettes and an occasional beer. My Mom lasted six days. She said she was was ready to go. Hospice is a horrible concept but a necessary thing. It's hard not to feel guilty but she had expressed she didn't know why she was still alive, had made a few feeble threats and attempts to end her own life. I hid the knife block on top of the fridge. I hid her pain pills under my dresser because once she stole about 15 of her hydrocodone pain pills and took them all thinking it would kill her; it only made her sluggish for a couple of days because she'd built up such a tolerance to pain meds. Even harder was halfway through the six hospice days when she was last most communicative she was determined to finally get up, sit upright in the chair like they wanted her to. Wanted to leave the bedroom and lay on the couch in the living room like I always suggested she could. She wanted out of bed, out of hospice. I tried to move her but she didn't last more than a couple of minutes out of bed. I assured her of course I would call and ask if that was a possibility - that we could end hospice and go back to the way it was...

Dosing her with morphine even when she was not speaking anymore was hard, but I was assured it was the best thing and she would not feel pain. The last few days when she was unverbal and mostly sleeping the most clear response I got from her multiple times was when I asked "Are you in any pain" and she would clearly shake her head. She did all the things. Smiling in her sleep, had a gibberish conversation with surprising inflection with people who wasn't there...

I was up till 3:40am Saturday morning, she sounded like she was drowning, and I rolled her a couple times on her side to spit out mucus. I dosed her with morphine mixed with crushed Ativan (another previously forbidden drug) and another pill that was supposed to help with secretion build up again, got her positioned on her side so she wouldn't gurgle and decided to try and sleep until my 6am alarm to dose her again. I finally heard the alarm at 630 and when I went in she was still warm but there was no oxygen or pulse reading on the oximeter even though it worked on my finger. I must have just missed her. One of her fears was dying alone and I sort of blew it. Potentially by minutes. Nurses assured me if I'd rolled her she might have survived a few more hours but it was inevitable.

I was afraid when I found her there would be this horrible explosion of emotion and crying, but it was more quiet and numb: "Okay. This is happening." The nurse who pronounced her was named Seth and sat with me for for the hour before the funeral home arrived to claim her and did the best job debriefing me on everything that happened. He asked for dental floss and quietly worked to get the ring off her finger that mom declared she wanted me to have but we could never remove as much as we tried which was pretty amazing. I was told hospice is there and can refer me if I need counseling. My cats are grieving - they haven't yet taken away the hospital bed that was installed and the cats are still laying in the same positions they took with Mom on the stripped mattress. They had a weird territorial fight running all over the house snarling at each other.

I'm doing okay I guess. I'm doing things and starting to straighten up the room and the entire house, washing her remaining clothes to donate and the blankets I'll figure out whether to keep but am still waiting for medical supply to collect two oxygen concentrators, four oxygen tanks, the bed, the bedside toilet, the wheelchair she didn't use, the extra walker I kept with the walker she already had and wouldn't use before I can start cleaning in earnest. My cousin whose mom survived two years explained how grief is like a hard candy that lodges in your throat and sometimes you get a bitter taste of it and feel sad. It's not going down for a while, so you're gonna have to keep licking it till it goes down. You can't spit it out, and you can't ignore it for too long or it shatters and you get all the sadness and bitterness at once and that's not optimal.

I still feel guilty. I could have done a better job. Could have been nicer to her a lot of times. Could have cuddled with her at her request more often. It's hard. Life will become easier without having to constantly take her care into account with every decision I make. I don't want to feel happy that this weight is lifted off my shoulders.