LOSING MOM - Part 40

The next morning when I walked into her room, Mom was agitated, trying to sit up while at the same time pushing the call button she was gripping in her crooked fingers.

“Mom, what’s wrong?” I asked, quickly dropping my purse and coffee on the table and moving toward the bed. “What’s going on? Are you in pain?”

“I forgot to fill out the form!” she said worriedly, her eyes darting around as if looking for something.

“What form?” I asked, totally confused. For the past few days she’d hardly been awake long enough to string two words together, so it was pretty disconcerting to suddenly find her speaking in complete sentences, bewildering as they were.

“The one for the church!” she told me, her words slurred and thick, making them a little hard to understand. “I was supposed to hand it in but I don’t think I did!”

“I’m sure it’s okay, Mom, we’ll figure it out,” I reassured her, rubbing her shoulder with gentle pressure to keep her from getting out of the bed. But she was too anxious, lost in whatever fragment of memory her morphine-hazed mind had taken her, and she wouldn’t lay back, her frail body trembling with the effort to sit up.

I could only imagine the tricks her mind might be playing with her when there was so much morphine coursing through her veins. The one time I’d ever been given it, after an emergency hysterectomy in my late forties, my own morphine-soaked brain convinced me that time wasn’t moving forward, to the point that I was scared to look at the wall clock across from my bed because the hands hardly ever moved. Even after I thought I’d been sleeping for hours, when I woke up and looked at the clock, only 3 or 4 minutes would have passed. And it kept happening, over and over.

I tried to ask the nurse if something was wrong - not with the clock, mind you, but with actual ‘time’ itself - but I don’t think my words came out the way I was thinking them because she didn’t seem too concerned...just kept taking my vitals as though nothing unusual was happening at all.

It was pretty scary being in a world where time was moving differently for me than for anyone else, and though it was totally morphine-induced, the experience felt very real to me. And I was helpless to do anything about it.

Poor Mom, I thought, sitting on the side of her bed, my arms wrapped around her frail, trembling body trying to keep her calm, murmuring softly to her that it was going to be okay, we’d find the form.

Thankfully an aide bustled in just then, but seeming a bit harried, barely glanced my way as she stepped quickly to the side of the bed. I let go of Mom, moving to the other side to get out of her way.

“Sit back now, Kay,” she said firmly, prying the call button out of Mom’s deathlike grip with one hand while keeping her on the bed with the other. I was somewhat taken aback by her brusque manner - not once had any of the Hospice nurses or aides been anything but patient and understanding with Mom, no matter how difficult the situation - but catching my eye, she quickly apologized. “Sorry...it’s just she’s been pushing the button all morning.”

“Oh dear,” I murmured, not quite sure how to respond. Part of me felt a little bad hearing Mom had been giving them trouble, and wondered briefly if I should be the one apologizing, knowing how busy they all were.

But one look at my mother’s tired, anxious face and I quickly pushed away the thought. Whether real or imagined, Mom was clearly worried about this form, and the fact that she’d been pressing the call button all morning nearly broke my heart. She didn’t need me to apologize for her, she needed me to help her feel less worried.

“Could she be in pain?” I wondered out loud, glancing at the clock. It was just past 9:30, not even two hours since her last pain meds at 8, but still more than two hours until the nurse made her next rounds with the medicine cart at noon. Usually Mom made it the four hours between doses, but recently she’d been having more and more of what they called ‘breakthrough pain’ and would need a little extra morphine to help her get through.

The problem we sometimes ran into, though, was that because Mom had an unusually high threshold for pain, along with a really annoying habit of NOT sharing her health issues with her daughters, our mother rarely vocalized her discomfort with words or sounds. Instead she would become a little restless, perhaps shifting her legs beneath the covers, or clearing her throat over and over.

Sometimes she’d settle back down and we’d breathe a sigh of relief, going back to reading our book, or working on our laptop. But other times the restlessness got worse, so we’d go sit by her side, rubbing her arm and asking “Mom, are you in pain?”

She’d look at us, confusion clouding her eyes, as if she wasn’t sure what we were asking.

“I don’t think so” she’d murmur, but then shift uncomfortably to another position.

“Are you sure?” we would press.

“Maybe my elbow” she would finally confess. Mom’s pain was pernicious, sneaking around her body like a dangerous snake, then biting her in the most random places - an elbow one day, a toe, or shoulder, or finger the next. It was hard to ever know for sure how she felt, and unless Mom was able to tell us, well...sometimes we would just have to guess.

Like now. Mom’s agitation over the imaginary form could be from too much morphine, but it could also be that the morphine was wearing off, and she was actually in pain.

“The nurse is aware of the situation,” the aide replied stiffly, repositioning the pillows behind Mom who was, thankfully, settling down a little. “How’s that, Kay? Better?”

Mom nodded wearily, laying her head back, her eyes drifting closed. The aide, softening a little now that she had things under control, looked over at me sympathetically.

“Will you be okay here, now?”

“We’re good,” I told her, settling myself in the recliner where I could comfortably keep a watchful eye on Mom. “But could you make sure the nurse knows I’m here?”

“She’ll be in soon,” the aide assured me, taking one last look over at Mom before turning to leave. “Try to get some rest,” she added, “you look a little tired.”

Wow, I thought wryly, jerking up the lever on the recliner a little harder than necessary to raise the footrest as I watched the aide walk out the door. Me, tired? Really?

Taking a few deep breaths as I lay back, I tried to brush off my annoyance at the aide’s observation. Tired? Of course I was tired. In fact, I was way more than tired. Tired is what you feel after a really long day working, or hiking, or gardening. Tired is when you haven’t had a good night’s sleep, or your children are running you ragged. Tired is normal.

But when you’re in a Hospice room day after day, watching your mother dying right before your eyes, deciding again and again if she should get more morphine so she’s comfortable, or less because you know giving her more will make her die faster, trying to stay upbeat and positive for your family and friends even though all you want to do is cry, remembering to eat and sleep yourself so you can do it all again the next day, well, there’s nothing normal about it, and I didn’t feel just tired. What I felt was a soul crushing fatigue so deep I could feel it in my bones, and it took every ounce of strength I could muster to keep putting one foot in front of the other.

Mom stirred, then opened her eyes, looking a bit panicky for a moment, like she didn’t know where she was. But as I watched from the recliner, ready to jump up if she needed me, I saw her gaze fall on a picture of Dad that a kind nurse had recently moved to the tray table in front of her so Mom ‘wouldn’t feel so alone if she woke up scared’. She stared at it closely for a minute and then, much to my surprised relief, closed her eyes again and fell back to sleep.

Martin, the kind nurse who had moved the picture, certainly knew what he was doing. Mom had woken up feeling scared, and seeing Dad’s picture right in front of her did remind her she wasn’t alone, and calmed her down in a way no pain medication ever could.

Although, in hindsight, I like to think that maybe Mom was seeing more than just a picture of Dad that day. I like to think that maybe he was hovering around, there in the quiet room with his wife and middle daughter, just biding his time, waiting for Mom.

And she knew he was there.

To be continued...