| ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- on grief, hairdryers and dinner plates After that awful day Monday, my mother's pain subsided a bit. For the rest of the week she only got morphine twice a day--she's been very adamant about not taking more if she doesn't have to. Today, though, the pain is a little greater and she's had it three times in the course of 24 hours. She also has a new pain in her leg. It could just be a basic cramp but it could also be a blood clot and that's worrying. She's supposed to be on a pureed diet for fear of another bowel obstruction but she hates the food--and, honestly, who wouldn't hate pureed fucking corn dogs?--so we break the rules and bring her cookies and croissants and basically she's eating like a 3-year-old child. The hospice nurse did say she would see about getting the diet changed from 'pureed' to just 'soft' foods. My cousin's husband died Tuesday morning and that just feels so surreal. His path from hospice to death was startlingly short and cruel. S, my cousin, is holding up but I'm not sure she's really had the chance to process any of it yet. I nearly blew up at my youngest brother yesterday. C. and I went by my mom's house to get some stuff that she wants and he was there with a truckload of her clothes he said he was taking to Goodwill. I told him not to get rid of anything else without talking to me first. Mom's been wanting us to bring more of her stuff over to her facility and even though it's a pain in the ass--really, you need eight dinner plates? EIGHT?--I'm having trouble saying 'no' because I figure this is part of her process of dealing with it and who am I to direct how she cope with her own death? I tried talking to A. about that today (having had a chance to finally cool down) and he told me he wants to do all this now because once she's gone it will be harder to go through her stuff while we're all in mourning. On the one hand I get it but honestly I'm already in mourning. I've been grieving my mother since the moment we got that cancer diagnosis nearly eight weeks ago. The hospice social worker said something to me last week that really made me see things differently about how we deal with all of my mother's OCD requests ('all the towels,' a hairdryer even though she's bald, two glasses, not four or six, et. al). "You're all grieving the loss of her, of one person," the social worker said. "She's grieving the loss of all of you--she's losing every one of you all at once." Fuck. 3:33 pm - 07.04.19
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mourning the loss of her house - 30.05.19 - 8:39 pm Goodbye, I love you. I love you, goodbye. - 19.05.19 - 3:40 pm incredible lightness of being - 27.04.19 - 7:13 pm weeks probably, maybe a month - 19.04.19 - 1:49 pm not a moment too soon - 13.04.19 - 11:04 am |
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