My Mother's Last Days!

Mom was having lots of troubles with cardiac failure, and probably kidney failure as well, but seemed determined to keep on trucking. She was so proud when she made it all the way to the mailbox about a block from her apt. But she had trouble getting back. It was hard to tell what was the trouble, and I am not sure if it wasn't everything and COPD. But she kept doing OK, and when the assisted living place said we might start looking for something that could care for Mom with more intensity, we had no idea that it would soon be a traumatic trip to the hospital. We were called by the hospital, and I called my brother and we all started to drive North. We were 40 miles from the hospital, and my brother was 80 miles. We drove a road along the water and as we neared the town where the hospital was, Ode To The Moon came on the radio, there was an electrical storm going on all around us, and it was 12:00 midnight. What a spectacular way for someone to leave this world.

We arrived at the hospital, and were ushered into the Intensive Care Wing, and my brother soon arrived with his wife. Mom was hooked up to too many tubes, and was not breathing on her own, but they said she could hear us if we wanted to talk to her. It was hard to see and comprehend that this was the wonderful happy little Mom we all knew. But we talked to her and told her to keep up the fight and we would be there for her. They told us not to expect her to last the night. We left somewhere around 4:00 AM, and went home to be called and told that Mom had made it and would be making it for awhile maybe.

She actually went back to her apt. and when it next happened, maybe a month later, when we got to her apt. we found a note that she had written to us saying goodbye. We were in the apt. getting her glasses and some clothes as they said she could move to a nursing home in a few days. This was the downhill run, and she was very angry for awhile as she had wanted to die, but a neighbor had found her and called 911. She had wanted to let God take her, she said. She was ready, and hadn't she told us so in the note? She made it another few months, and we found her a really nice place near where she had lived for some time, a nursing home that had a day care, and a cat wandering around, and nice places to sit, and she had her own room eventually. When she was really going down hill she did not really understand where she was, and thought it so nice that she was able to live in this nice house with all these nice people. My brother from back East was here for the duration, and he would get to her bedside first in the day and was there when she breathed her last. She did not know much by then and suffered the extreme kidney failure symptoms calmed by morphine, and she slipped away. We got there 30 minutes late, but I held her and said goodbye anyway. She was my little Mom, and she loved us all so much, her kids, her grandkids, and her life, and her God she had found. She left a wonderful legacy of laughter, caring, and love that we all try to emulate in our own way. May she be able to see what she has wrought and be rejoicing in her heaven! Amen

Anitiyah!

I am borrowing that name from a book I am reading. I want to write a story about my daughter and want to preserve her privacy. This is my youngest daughter born in the early 60's, a time of great awakening, efforts at peace, and a degree of safety I don't think we will see anymore. Aniy was two weeks old when we were going to move to a new job, and a new home. Her birth had seemed to have been fraught with suspense as I thought I was in labor, but it was so light it might just be an upset stomach. We decided to drive to the town where the hospital was and wait at a friends home. We would leave our two other kids there while I was in the hospital. The friends finally shooed me out of there as they were sure I was going to give birth in their living room. So I got to the hospital and went through the usual preps and indeed I was in active labor. Aniy was born a couple of hours after I got to the hospital, and they put me in a room afterward with the only other person in the maternity section of this little old hospital run by Catholic nuns. The ward was on the third floor and to get there you climbed three flights of wide stairs. I think there was an elevator, but the nuns always walked up and down the stairs. Maybe they had to do that as a penance. You could hear the stairs creaking when anyone was on them. In my memory it seemed a dark place, but it was night when I gave birth.

I was really tired and dozed, but my roommate shook me wake to tell me she could hear dripping. I was hemorrhaging. We managed to get ahold of the nun in charge, I think I had a bell to ring, but my roommate did actually go out in the hall to look for someone, and the nun came up to check me. She elevated the end of the bed, changed all the covers and packed me, and massaged my belly, telling me to do the same. It was an agony trip, and I was so tired. I kept trying to keep kneading my belly, but would fall asleep. I think I must have finally stopped bleeding, and did sleep as I was soon out of the hospital. I am pretty sure they only kept you a day or two back in the early 60's. At home I attended to getting ready to move. What a mess. Three kids, one a newborn, and I was so weak I could barely do anything. I also was breast feeding this little bitty girl. We also had a big black cat named Linus.

We had a VW bug and we would drive that car to the new home with three kids, the cat, and what luggage we really needed to make the trip. A moving company had all our other household things headed to the new home. I really do not remember much other than trying to keep the kids quiet, and tending to the new baby, and hoping the cat would settle down. The meds we got to quiet the cat did the opposite. The cat was yowling and hyper and moving around, and we were all going a bit nuts. The cat was a big cat, and we finally stopped at a Vets office in some little farm town in Wyoming and asked them to keep the cat until we could arrange to get it to where we were going to live. This was the start of many cat fiascos in my life that I still cannot forget. We never got the cat back, and if we are to believe the Vet, our cat went to a good life as a barn cat. I really hope so!

We did make it to the new home in a small mining town at 10,000 feet, and moved into a motel room. I immediately ended up in bed as I began to hemorrhage again. So I had a little travel bed with Aniy in it next to my bed, and the other two kids were just going to have to entertain themselves while their Father was out arranging for us to have an apartment, and to await for our goods to arrive. It was pretty miserable. I went through this town a couple of weeks ago, and the motel is still there, and it pretty much looks the same. It is right on the main road through town, and rather stark.

When we finally moved into our apartment, it was on the second floor, had two bedrooms, a kitchen where you also ate, and a small living room. It was a beginning. The house we had moved from at a mine site in Montana was basically three shacks tacked together. It also had two bedrooms and was one among six houses up a dirt road at a phosphate mine. I guess I should write about this place in the hinterlands of Montana. So that will become an aside from the story of Aniy. To be continued!