look up. get smacked down again.
July 24, 2014, 2014

A few minutes after I wrote that last entry, and before I could even get it posted, my dad called.

My mom is going downhill fast. We called in the hospice people. She's on morphine and xanax, and according to her continuing care nurse, "her kids better spend this weekend with her, because she might not make it to another." She has about given up, I think. She didn't argue about hospice, she has started to not care how she looks--a HUGE deal, if you knew my mom--and she has crossed all her goals off of her bucket list. She's outlived her post-surgical prognosis, she's outlived the 3-6 month prediction of her oncologist, she got both her engaged grandsons married off, she got my dad to sell the business and retire, and she went to one last family reunion.

So I called in to work for a couple of days in order to deal with it.

I'm a calm, reasonable, medically knowledgeable, rational, intelligent person. On a certain level, I can process all this. I understand it, and I can accept the various stages of her illness, and that it will end in her death. To wish her to continue to suffer would be irrational and unkind.

On another level, well...she was a pretty horrible mother. Narcissistic, ill-tempered, manipulative, physically and emotionally abusive. At times, downright whacko. One would think that it would be easy to let go.

But on still another level...she's my mommy. Who, I have come to realize over the course of a half-century, loves me to the best of her ability. And I really don't want to lose her.