Liralen's Adventures Through Life

I think the hardest thing about this whole thing was that Mom couldn't really talk or process any of it with us. She couldn't voice her thoughts and couldn't do anything for Dad or us about the end of our relationship with her. By the time we found out the tumor had already taken her ability to word. Oddly, luckily, I've had to make closure for myself quite a few times in my past often without input from the other person that was involved.  We actually had a very good visit with her for the first few days. She was smiling every time we saw her, and she even had a morning where she ate an entire bowl of fortified cereal and we were able to take her out for a walk with Dad. But by the second to last day she'd stopped eating and even drinking.  I got my time with her. Alone. Without the protection of my husband and without the anxiety of my father or the incessant talking of my sister. Mom was asleep, fitful, restlessly so, but even when she woke she would nod off agai...

I'm getting asked a lot these days about how my mother is doing. It's never easy to answer, because she's dying. She's pretty comfortable for all that, all of her needs are being taken care of. She has hospice checking on her every time she needs anything. She's being made as comfortable as possible with modern medicine and care.  Most people end up saying, "That's so hard."  And the only thing I can really do is nod. There's something in my head that always says, "It's not hard the way you think it's hard." It doesn't detract from the fact that everything is pretty difficult right now. I've always hated my emotions. They're always pretty difficult for me to access, except when I have the opportunity to process them with someone else, extroverted emotional expression seems to be one of the few ways I can deal with them. Grief always eats all my energy.  When I first came home from San Diego after the Thanksgiving perio...

Tuesday was absolutely insane. We had two appointments for the radiation oncologist and then the lung cancer specialist.  And while we were talking with the lung cancer specialist, he heard that John and I were here from Colorado and were going to fly back, again, for the brain cancer specialist next week. He said, "I think I can find an opening for you with him. Let me go talk to him."  He talked with the brain cancer specialist, and lo and behold, we got the 1pm appointment we couldn't get through the regular channels, and while we decided to have lunch in the cafe in the cancer center, Kathy and John got texts about the new appointment.  This whole trip has been blessed with so many bits of luck. John and I got two of the last four seats on the non-stop that was most convenient for our flight in. This Friday's flight was half the price of all the other flights around this crazy travel holiday. Our room at our hotel was the very last room left at this Homewood Suite...

My mother took my hand, as we were going to leave tonight, and she very deliberately, gently, and slowly pressed a kiss on the back of my hand. And at the look on her face, I clasped her hand back just as gently, but firmly, and I kissed her on her forehead. She smiled and let me go.  Words are failing her. I find it ironic that the only way that I can process her now word-muddled existence is through my long practice with words.  On November 13th, my sister and father did a video doctor's check with my mother. Their GP was so alarmed at her inability to truly respond to their questions made their primary doctor tell them that they had to go to the ER. That there was something seriously wrong with her and they had to get her looked at as quickly as possible. The three of them spend two horrific days in the over crowded ER at UCSD, in order to get the CAT scans and MRI that showed a very large shadow in her brain.  This was while John and I were in Kauai. We heard the begi...