LOSING MOM - Part 44

Mom’s slow, unpredictable decline continued over the next few days, and as her moments of awareness became fewer and more far between, I could feel my own energy slipping away along with her. The fatigue in my body was unlike anything I’d ever experienced, the weight of it like a thick cloak impeding my every move. Nothing felt easy, and as the days slid by, one into the next, their sameness was a heavy burden I carried around with me that made everything I did feel that much harder.

Like waking up in the early morning after a fitful night’s sleep waiting for the phone to ring, only to realize that it hadn’t rung, again. Dragging myself out of bed, out of the apartment and back over to Hospice, where I would numbly walk down the long corridor to Mom’s room, smiling sadly at the nurses and aides who were smiling so sadly at me because, well, there I was, walking down the hall, again. Mustering up the energy to go down to the cafeteria for lunch, because I had to eat, right? and having the same grilled cheese, potato chips, iced tea, and triple chocolate fudge brownie, again. Then, hours later, after double checking that the night nurse knew how to reach me, wearily making my way back down the long corridor, out to the car, and back to Mom’s apartment, where I would scramble an egg for dinner and suck down a glass (or two) of chardonnay, before crawling into bed for another sleepless night, again.

One particularly difficult morning, I was sitting staring out the window in Mom’s room, feeling sad, and tired, and guilty that I could be wallowing in such self-pity while my mother lay dying next to me, when the Hospice chaplain, the same one who’d blamed me a week earlier for Mom’s so-called ‘spiritual crisis’, poked her head in the door. 

“Just checking in,” she said when she saw me, but seeing Mom was asleep offered to come back another time.

“Okay,” I told her, shrugging indifferently, “Mom’s not awake much these days, though.”

I tried to keep my tone neutral, maybe even a bit dismissive so she would go away, but something in my voice must have betrayed my actual state of mind because suddenly she was walking toward me across the room.

“How are you doing?” she asked, stopping just in front of where I was sitting on the recliner. “It must be hard without your sisters here.”

Not wanting to admit how hard it actually was, especially to her, I looked down at my hands in my lap, willing back the tears welling up behind my eyes. 

“I’m pretty tired,” I confessed. “It’s been a long 5 weeks.”

“Yes,” she agreed, “and a long time to be away from home.”

The tears I’d been holding back began seeping out the corner of my eyes at this unexpected acknowledgement of what was, if I were to be honest, the root of my guilt. Yes, I felt badly that I was feeling so sorry for myself when I should have been focused on Mom, but there was also a deep-seated angst churning around inside me that in trying to be a good daughter, I was being a really bad wife. I’d been away from home for such a long time, and though John had never been anything but supportive, I felt anxious and guilty that by choosing to stay there with Mom, I was, at the same time, choosing not to be with him.

The chaplain nodded sympathetically as I tearfully confided some of the dark thoughts circling around my tired brain. How horrible am I to want my mom to die faster just so I can go home? I asked her. What kind of daughter would want that? 

“What you’re feeling is more normal than you’d think,” she assured me, perching herself on the arm of a nearby chair. “Try not to be so hard on yourself. It’s not easy what you’re going through.” 

She paused, her gaze falling on Mom, still sleeping soundly, despite our conversation, before turning back to me.  “This is actually a pretty special time for you and your mother. How often do you get to be just a daughter? ”

I looked up in surprise, a little taken aback by her perceptiveness given our last encounter when she'd been anything but, and managed a watery smile. “Not very often,” I admitted, trying to remember a time when I’d ever been just a daughter, without at the same time being a sister, and a wife, and a mother. In fact, I’m not sure it had ever occurred to me that I could be just one or the other, intertwined as they were in my perception of who I was.

But the chaplain was right. When I was in that Hospice room, alone with my mom day after day, it was a special time because I could be just a daughter. And with that subtle shift in perspective I felt a certain lightness begin to diffuse the heaviness inside me, allowing me to breathe a little easier.

“Thank you,” I said, standing up to give her a quick hug. “I can’t tell you how much hearing that helps.”

“Sometimes it’s hard to see things when you’re so close,” she replied, turning to leave. Pausing at the end of Mom’s bed, she gently touched the quilt covering Mom’s frail form, before heading quickly out of the room.

I sat back down, trying to digest how I could possibly feel grateful to this woman who had continuously irritated and upset me since the moment we met. Perhaps she and I had some sort of karmic tie we were trying to resolve, or some sort of spiritual contract that was playing out in my mother’s Hospice room. But unlike my other encounters with her that had left me angry and uncertain, this one had me feeling a little more hopeful. A little more sure that I was where I was supposed to be.

That time alone with my mom in her Hospice room, just being a daughter, really was a gift, bittersweet as it feels now, looking back. Because sadly, what’s true, and what I imagine the chaplain knew but thankfully kept to herself that day, was that once Mom was gone, I would never get to be a daughter again.

To be continued...