2 years later

As the day comes to a close I have resigned myself to the sense that this day means nothing to most people.  As I was going about my day I remember thinking to myself that today was a monumental day for me and no one around me knew it.  It’s funny how good we are at keeping in the grief so that others don’t see that it is two years later and we are still grieving… it is two years later and I am still grieving.

I started feeling a little off right around April and it just continued to worsen with each day that May drew closer.  I found myself holding back tears in the shower, struggling to drive without crying, trying to mention my Mom without crying and really trying not to lose myself in the memories of those 2 years and especially those last 24 hours.  The thought often crossed my mind that I needed to suck it up because no one wants to see me crying.  Get it together right?  So April and most of May I held off the tears and I turned off my feelings the best that I could and then I went on vacation for a week and a half.  And I was happy… and relieved. Relieved because I got to go on vacation during the month that brought back so much pain for me.  I use vacation as a crutch you see.  I went on vacation last May as well and I had the same experience.  Underneath the joy of experiencing new places I also was experiencing a nice and steady flow of sadness.  A sadness that you only know when you have lost someone near and dear to you.  A sadness that if you stop and focus on it it creates a hole that goes from your throat to the pit of your stomach like a tunnel that is going to suck you down and never let you go.  And finally I had to give into this sadness and so two years after I spent a night of restlessness listening to my mom struggling to breathe and knowing that whatever was happening was not good I broke down.  I wrote everything that I was feeling in my journal and I cried harder than I have cried this whole past year.  That night must be my trigger because it is harder for me to get through that night than it is the anniversary day of my Mother’s death. After I was done crying I felt a calmness come over me.  I just needed to process all of the grief that I had been bottling up inside of me.

The insomnia is also back.  I had trouble sleeping for months after my Mom passed away and so far the insomnia comes back each year around this time.  I wonder if it will go away.  Do I want it to go away?  I do my best thinking and processing of feelings and writing when I stay up late.  Who knows.  For now I’ll keep making my annual blog post and give an update I suppose.

So to recap the past year let’s see…

Somehow I deleted the voicemail that I had saved from when my Mom was sick.  It was a funny voicemail because Mom was laughing about something that she had to tell me but yet it was sad because it showed how much her memory and brain were affected from the cancer and treatments.  I cried when I realized that I had lost that voicemail.

My dad is dating again and in the process has put a great distance between himself and my sister and I.  It’s unfortunate but it is not an unforeseen event.  I am dealing with it the best that I can… and I talk about it in therapy ALOT.

Gavin continues to be the apple of everyone’s eye.  He still does some gestures that remind us of Mom and I am no longer focusing on how much it hurts that Mom isn’t here to see and know him.  Beth and I often talk about how much Mom would have loved to see Gavin do each milestone and how she would have babysat him and doted on him.

We still have not gone through any of Mom’s things.  I know- it’s not helping with the grieving process.  I’m not pushing to go through her things because I honestly can’t bear to do it.  I know it’s going to hurt and I am okay with avoiding that right now but I know the time is coming when we will need to do this.

Dad did put a chair back at the table where we had the space for Mom’s wheelchair. The first time I noticed that I just stopped and stared because the chair looked so out of place.  It made me very sad and I cried in the car when I went home that day.

One of my best friends from high school lost her mother to ovarian cancer this past year.  It happened very quickly and boy did it bring up a lot of old feelings for me.  I try to offer advice and insight since I went through this first but damned if I know what to say.

The parent’s of my other best friend from high school both have/had colon cancer which was diagnosed when my Mom was still alive.  I used both have/had because her Dad doesn’t need any more treatments but her Mom continues to have treatments.  Either way I don’t feel that I do enough for them.  I need to do better there.

For awhile I was pretty focused on how the devil it was possible that all three of us had to experience cancer affecting our families.  How is that even fair right?  I harped on the not so fairness of life for awhile but then I recognized that this was a harmful thought process and so I try not to focus on that anymore.  I should also mention that my friend had cancer herself prior to my Mom being diagnosed and then her parent’s being diagnosed. She is in remission and kicking ass at life.  Seriously she is the strongest person I know.  I just wanted to give her a shoutout here because she definitely deserves it.

I have also read quite a few books written by people who have lost loved ones.  I find that I relate to things here and there in each of the books but there is always at least one thing that turns me off throughout the book.  I continue to read these books because something in me is craving to understand how others have dealt and are still dealing with their grief.

I end this post with not as quite an optimistic point of view as I did in my post from last year but I will say this, when life serves you lemons you make lemonade.

2014…We Made It

I call this post “2014… We Made It” because if you had asked my family in November if we would be spending Christmas with Mom, we would have answered “No” or “probably not”.  My feelings on this, which I voiced to Beth, was that IF Mom made it to December that she would fight and keep right on through to January because if you know my Mom you know that Christmas IS her all time favorite holiday; there was no way she was going to miss out on Christmas with us.

Christmas was much better than I expected it to be.  Mom was well rested for this holiday as she had slept all day long on Christmas Eve.  This enabled her to be awake for a few hours on Christmas which was so nice that I can’t even find the words to explain it.  Mom sat and watched everyone open their presents and even though she was tired and her head was droopy, she was still awake and seemed to enjoy having us all there.  But it is important to note that Mom did not understand that it was Christmas.  This was tough because we wanted to buy Mom gifts but it was impossible to buy her gifts that we used to buy for her.  So we bought her things for the house etc.  I didn’t even put names on the gifts that I had bought for Mom (example sheets and dish towels) because if something had happened I didn’t want to have gifts that said “Mom” on them which I would have to unwrap and deal with.  Dad bought Mom earrings and a necklace because he has always bought her jewelry for Christmas even though he knew that she wouldn’t be able to fully appreciate it.  It was very difficult for Dad, Beth and I not to cry when he brought home the jewelry and then again when Dad opened it for Mom on Christmas morning.  We were all fully aware that it would be the last time that Dad would buy Mom jewelry.  So that I will remember this, I also want to mention that Mom helped me wrap one gift for Christmas and that was earrings for Megan and so Megan got one last gift from “Gram”.  So we all go through Christmas the best that we could.  I cried twice – once in the morning when I was lying down with Mom and we were talking about it being Christmas Day and then again that night when I went to bed and I was thinking about how I had just spent my last Christmas with my Mom… ever.

So 2014 is here and I can’t help but think that this will be one of the worst years of my life and also a year of many “firsts” without my Mom.  I am so not looking forward to 2014.  That being said, I do not know how to really explain how Mom is anymore.  When I think that she can’t possibly sleep more, she shows me that she can.  When I think that she can’t possibly talk less, she shows me that she can.  When I think that she can’t possibly get worse, she does.  I have read books and articles online and have heard the hospice nurse say that the progression is that your loved one will have less interest in things, will eventually stop eating solid foods, will talk less, will not be able to take pills anymore etc..  I thought gosh there must be some dramatic point when all of these things happen and you can mentally “check” them off of a list.  I can tell you that this is not the case.  All of these things happen without you even realizing it is happening. I can tell you this with certainty because this realization has just come to me this past weekend.  I have realized that over the last few months time that Mom has slowly stopped doing all of these things. For example with the pills – we have crushed up pills in the past month(s) but only the ones that were enormous.  Then last weekend Mom was having a hard time taking Tylenol so this past week Dad switched to liquid Tylenol as well as a mix of crushing pills vs taking the small ones. Today we crushed all pills and gave them to Mom in applesauce.  Crushing pills is now  the “new normal”.  It’s the same way with all of the other signs.

So I will now try to answer the question as to how Mom is now.

Mom has a very bad cold right now.  I think her breathing is comparative to a percolating coffee pot.  Last week the hospice nurse said that Mom was doing good and she was just to take an antibiotic.  Mom has NOT gotten significantly better and this is worrisome.  Dad lays her on her side a lot because she has a terrible cough.  Mom has also lost a good bit of weight which has become noticeable over the past two weeks.  Mom eats mostly soup, pudding and mashed potatoes and gravy… if you can get her to eat at all that is.  She also has a hard time drinking from a straw… often times we have to put the glass to her lips to have her drink now.   I swear that Mom doesn’t like to eat for anyone but Dad anymore.  On both Saturday and Sunday Mom wouldn’t eat for Beth or me but then Dad would come over and she would eat a bit for him.  The bottom line is that we are all hoping that Mom’s cold does not turn into pneumonia.  Hopefully the nurse will have positive things to say this week.

I end this post on a partial quote that I saw on facebook today –

“Avoidance is always the wrong answer… pretending it does not exist will not make it go away.”  People can say “I can’t stand to see so and so like this” and “it upsets me to see so and so like that” and so they do not visit or lend support to their friends and family who are in need of help and support.  My response to this is taken from another quote that I read last year which went something like this “You have to be present to lend a hand because often times cancer patients and their caretakers do not know what they need until that very moment that they need it and if you aren’t there then you cannot help”.