What a hard year it has been. It seems that the last few years have been full of difficulties and hardships. But on the other hand, I know I am lucky.
I started the year with my entrance to nursing school. Orientation did little to orient us, but we came to class anyway with eyes like a deer stuck in headlights. We had so much work to do with the first test the following week. Slowly we became accustomed to having tests weekly.
Five weeks into the nursing program, and at the end of one course, Mom became ill. One day we went to a Winton Marsalis concert, with her driving, then the next week she had trouble getting around and carrying things.
I started the process of getting Hospice on board. This takes some time, as all kinds of details have to line up. Mom got very sick. Her abdomen had swollen as if she was six months pregnant, and she couldn’t stay focused on everyday things. She knew there was something wrong. After a run around at the VA clinic I took her to the Emergency Room and they admitted her to the palliative care unit at Forsyth Hospital. She was very sick and only getting sicker. After a couple of days they determined she had only weeks to live, probably. Hospice was brought in and I made arrangements for people to stay with Mom at her home while I was in school. Her friends from her AA group were a huge help. Other friends were in and out and my dear, long time friend Meg was there daily.
We continued to monitor her pain level and cognitive function. It was so hard because she didn’t want to sleep, and she would stay in the same position, standing or sitting, for hours, though I suppose for her it seemed only moments. She would say long strings of words that made no sense as a sentence, however they rhymed. I would learn later that this is known as “Clang Association.” She would try to say a full meaningful sentence but she would end with a word that rhymed with the word she meant to use. When we tried to ask if she was ok or wanted to move or needed anything, she would customarily snap at us as if we had just asked. It usually had been an hour or so since last checking on her.
Her pain worsened. It got more difficult for her to get around. We had a wheel chair that made it easy to move her from room to room, but she still wanted to try to walk. And she still wanted to do what she wanted to do, dammit. It was hard for her to grasp that other people needed to be with her and that their needs had to be considered. I suppose I am mostly speaking of myself. I spent all day in school, and all evening wrangling her. I was stuck between needing to study for the next impending test, and wanting desperately to spend every moment I could with my mother. Every once in a while she would say something with such clarity and conviction. As she said these things I knew I should pay attention and remember them. But they would run fleeting through my tired mind. It was enough just to be with her.
After four weeks of family and friends coming in and out of the house, after another four weeks of school where I wasn’t sure, on a daily basis, if I could continue, after essentially moving into Mom’s house, but leaving a lot of my things behind at my apartment, Mom’s condition worsened. It was the end approaching. It was the end of Mom’s life, and the end of the term at school. I had lab check offs and final exams at school, and Mom’s pain increasing and breathing patterns changing at home. I called the family to come. I wouldn’t have made it to or through that week without my new made school friends helping me with study guides and support, or without my oldest friends staying with me by my dying mother’s bedside and helping her transition out of this world and into the next.
Many other things happened along the way. There were the cigarette wars. Mom was going to smoke, dammit. It was her house. I didn’t want her to smoke alone, because she was prone to dropping the lit cigarettes. So, we made sure to keep her cigarettes out of her reach if no one was actively with her. This controlling behavior pissed her off, but was necessary.
One day when my uncle Paul, my aunts Eileen and Clare and my cousin Sarah were visiting, we were all on the deck enjoying the nice warm early spring weather. Mom was sitting quietly and someone asked her how she was. She replied, “I’m radiating out into the universe.”
While my sister was singing “Amazing Grace” to her at her bedside, Mom said aloud, “Fuck it.” That didn’t stop Dianne from singing, and later we all got a chuckle out of it.
Near the end, one of the last things I heard my mother say was, “We’re going to take it apart, and put it back together again.” That was sort of the story of her life. The people who knew my Mom know she was an auto mechanic for many years, and was always tinkering and pulling things apart and putting them back together. Periodically her life would seemingly be pulled apart, and bit-by-bit she would put it back together.
On Wednesday March 25, 2009 I had my final exam for Pharmacology. When I got home I found my Aunt Eileen was there with my dear friend Donna who had come from Massachusetts to help me. Meg was also there, still there from the day before. After a while Meg said goodnight and farewell to Mom. My Mother had been a second mother to her. At the very end, Eileen, Donna and I were by her side. We had been taking advantage of the gifts of food brought by friends and had just finished desert when Donna put her hands on my mother. Mom’s choppy “Cheyne-Stokes” breaths quieted, she took a few gentle breaths, and was gone, out into the universe. We decided that she had only waited for desert.
A few hours later, Paul and Clare arrived. The next morning we got up and did what our family has always done. We went to breakfast. After breakfast I took my final exam for my Health Assessments class and the following day I took the final for my Introduction to Nursing II class. I did not stop going to school, nor did I ask school to stop for me.
I decided I needed to wait until after my first round of clinical experience before I could handle a memorial service. It may have seemed a little late for some people, but I wanted to give attention to my mother’s life. The people who knew her later in her life never knew her as a mother of young children, as a beautiful race car driver, as a stunningly tall Marine Corps Officer. I had many pictures to scan, music to select, and above all, readings and speakers to arrange to present a memorial to my mother that was not typical. Because of all things my mother was, she was not typical.
So, despite a few snags and snafus we had a lovely memorial service for Mom in May. We laid her ashes to rest next to Mike and kitty corner to Kate. The family left, (Clare stayed on a few days to help organize a few things for me) and I continued school.
In April I had moved completely out of my apartment into Mom’s house. Most of my things went into storage. I continued with school, while periodically moving things into the house and out of the house.
I immersed myself in school. I barely let myself breathe. But I have learned so much. I have witnessed birth, pain, understanding, learning, joy at small things, heartbreak at large things and vice-versa.
Together, my cohorts and I have trudged through this year’s education. From May until now we have been but a blur. We have nursed cancer patients, general surgery patients, neurology patients, mental patients, maternity patients, heart patients, victims of car accidents and many others. We went through the rite of passage of nurses and were “pinned” on December 17, though we don’t finish until February. This has confused a lot of people. I am forever grateful that Dianne, Meg, Mr. B., Paul, Eileen, Allison, and Anita could be there. Clare was there in spirit and I know that my Mother was with me as well.
As school has progressed I have attempted to take care of myself. I am taking advantage of Hospice’s counseling. I am getting massages occasionally. I am going hiking when I can. I am listening to music. I am seeing my tribe when I can. I am grateful for every day and for having the families I have, both of birth and of choice.
Even though this year has been especially hard, I have a roof over my head. I have food to eat. I have education that will allow me employment even in this difficult time. And though I am the last of my original family, the one I was born into, I have my larger family. I am lucky.
