So I have wisely decided to take whatever April 26 is through May 3rd off every year. There is a good reason. Last week I was irritable and a little on edge. Didn’t know why…consciously. Then I got a call from a family that had a similar story to mine and my sister’s. I didn’t know if this mother would become a patient of mine but I couldn’t NOT help this family. Every now and then you get to look back on things in your life and be thankful that nothing truly bad has ever happened to you. People come and go out of our lives. Sometimes we miss them and sometimes we don’t. There are many more that I don’t miss then there are ones I do miss.
Sisters and brother experience the same people in their lives at the same moment in time in different ways. My perspective about my mother is totally different then my sister’s. We had two very different experiences age 1-10….you could almost argue a different woman attended each of our childhoods. Some things about that woman were static. Love. Nurturing. Protective. That we both got. That’s the only piece of either of our childhoods that survives or is important now.
For those of you who still have your mother there is something very strange about not having her. Past the sadness and the experience there is a strange orphaned feeling. I was an adult when she died, my sister was just a teenager. I was thrown into making all the grown up decisions that come with death and she was rendered speechless with shock. I went through speechless with shock a year later on the anniversary of her death. May 1st. That’s why I have decided that this pre-Mother’s Day weekend and the days that surround it I can not work….at least not at my hospice job.
The people I spent the weekend with were not my family but looked a lot like all of them. Each face losing someone different in the same person. A sister, a wife, a mother, a daughter. One day she was having a lucid conversation with myself and her husband and the next day she couldn’t form a clear thought. When her husband called me Saturday night he just said…..you said to call if I needed you, I need you. Family had arrived and he had run out of words. He had run out of the story that brought them to this place and had run out of patience for explaining it one more time. I told him that if he needed me to help with that I would. So I went back to the hospital to tell her sister why things were only going to be counted in hours until this woman would die. The questions came calmly and somehow I sat calmly with these people and answered the questions. Why is her body failing? Why can’t we fix X or Y or Z? Can we do something to get her to this one big event we were trying to help her make it to? By the end of the conversation they only wanted her comfort because the outcome couldn’t change. Every time I comfort a family through their loved one dying I fight not to cry. Today I lost the fight. As her almost 17 year old daughter looked at me all could think about was the look on my sisters face when I rounded the corner the day our mother died….really died, not the day she drew her last breath. While I looked at this girl I thought, please let this horrible day have been peaceful for her. Please let this horrible day be the one she remembers least, hates the most and doesn’t dwell on. Nothing could change it but hopefully it was softened by what palliative care can do for families. As I comforted her sister I thought of the picture I saw on April 29 that started my tailspin. It’s a beautiful picture of my mother. I know the look. She knew her picture was being taken. Wasn’t happy about it but gave in to it and braced until it was over. I’m glad she gave in and I’m glad my Aunt…..who has annoyed the living shit out of every member of our family at some point with that camera…..I am so glad she has snapped pictures with all her might. Without her even the sharpest memories would have faded.
I can only hope that when a child watches her mother die peacefully that there is a different recovery and set of memories that accompany that passing as opposed to the child her watches her mother die not so peacefully.
Medicine is funny….people don’t understand that some days and in some situations it’s just another day at the office. We go on autopilot and do our jobs just like everyone else in the world. Then, sometimes when its least expected a patient and their family will transport you to a place that you really didn’t want to go back to - but you could clearly see that in going back to that place could make this “same” event for them different and hopefully….not better…more recoverable. There is no better.
I was recently told that grief doesn’t go away. The cliché about time healing all wounds is just that, cliché. It doesn’t heal the wounds. They stay open they just bleed less. The brilliance of that horror only fades….when we are lucky. What I have found in 12 years is that sometimes the grief fades into the shadows and I don’t even notice it lurking until the day is past. But sometimes, like this year it’s a rattlesnake waiting to strike. This year the rattlesnake let me help someone, some family before it attacked me. The venom, I thought had all but gone, but when she died today it all rushed back into my system……..it’s gonna take a little while for it go again this time.
I know mothers who are an absolute waste of space on the planet and oxygen. And still losing them will hurt their children. So when one goes that was loving and thoughtful, the children who were loved and the children who merely survived are the same. Level playing field. Something not said, good or bad, is left hanging. Some event in the future will happen and there will be someone important missing from the picture.
On Mother’s Day this year….if anyone wants to snap a picture of me I’ll let them. Someday it might be the picture that one of my girls finds out of the blue that makes them glad the picture was taken. And if you have children and they want to take your picture, who cares if you think you’re too fat or too skinny, if you face is breaking out or if you are tired, if you hair is a mess and your makeup is smeared. Who cares? The person looking at that picture with a smile on her face in 12 years may need that picture. Don’t keep it from them.
Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. I miss you.
No comments:
Post a Comment