My Mothers Passing

I'm not sure how to start this post as it is meant to be about being grateful! My family and I have been on an emotional roller coaster in the last few weeks. My mother was diagnosed with terminal inoperable pancreatic cancer and came to live with me in Metung. She came here in the Winter school holidays (July) after being discharged from Peter Mac Cancer Institute. It was decided that she would come to live with me as I worked part time and I would be home more to be able to look after her. At first mum was pretty weak but soon gained some strength and started doing small things around the house like washing up, closing the blinds, walking up and down the hallway and even knitting. Sometimes Dave and I would look at each other and think (hopefully) that maybe the doctors have made a mistake. Unfortunately soon mum started to deteriorate, she got some fluid on her lungs and was admitted into Bairnsdale Hospital to drain it. What was to be a couple of days stay turned out to be a three week stay. We organised for mum to come home to our place, with the hire of all the equipment such as a hospital bed, air mattress and so on, so that she could be more comfortable and it would make it easier for her and for us. Nurses came everyday now instead of the three times per week. I took the two weeks before the September holidays off to be with mum as there was no way she could be left alone. In those two weeks my mum deteriorated so fast, however there were days she was better than others and that surprised us. In the mornings I would quietly sneak into mum's room to see if she was still with us. It was a truly horrible feeling. My sister came to stay for a few days, a week after mum came out of hospital and on the Thursday (12th September), mum was pretty sick so we called my two sons and told them they may need to come and see her just in case. When they did arrive on the 13th mum had picked up and she was talking to them and joking with them and trying out some cool sunglasses. It was this day we discussed her funeral and some other things. Mum was scared that night as she thought she was going to die the night being the 13th. You see mum was first diagnosed with Hodgkins on the 13th many years before and her oldest daughter (my older sister Maria) died on the 13th and this year being 2013 was when she was diagnosed with this damn disease, so she didn't like the number much and she obviously thought it was pretty unlucky for her. Well she didn't die that night thank goodness. The following Thursday morning mum woke up pretty dazed and was asking for my sister as she knew Isabel was coming to see her on Saturday. I asked mum if she wanted me to call Isabel and see if she could come earlier and she said yes. I phoned my sister but didn't tell mum that she was coming that day as I wanted her to be surprised which she was and quite happy about it. On the Friday mum was pretty drowsy and hard to understand and she was worse on Saturday. I went to bed thinking that mum may not make it through the night. She passed away the early hours of Sunday. I felt that my mum had already gone on Saturday, it was just her body breathing and keeping her alive, and that she wasn't there. The passing of my mum was at the time a relief for me that now my mother wasn't suffering any more, but it was also the most horrible and sad feeling of not being able to see her ever again. I am so grateful that my kids got to spend the weekend before with her when she was still with it and joking with them, I am sad that my little Zoe had to see her nanna so sick. I am grateful that I chose to have mum here with us her family instead of in a clinical unfamiliar hospital even though I didn't feel comfortable with having mum die in my home. I still get a weird feeling when I go into the bedroom in which she died even though I have emptied it of my mother's things and decorated it nicely. It is really weird how your view on things change as you get older and perhaps because of your life experiences, when my sister died  I was eighteen and at the time my mother stripped her room and got rid of all of Maria's things (I managed to keep a couple of things which I still have), I couldn't understand at the time as to why my mum would do this, I wanted to keep the room as is, sort of like a shrine. I wanted to remember my sister for as long as possible. My attitude has so changed with my mum's passing, perhaps it is due to the way she passed and the suffering she endured. A lot of my mother's things remind me of this and I don't want to remember her that way. I want to remember my mother as the loving, caring and extremely brave woman she was!