Death and Grief

My mom passed away three weeks ago on Friday early in the morning. I barely had time to process it as it happened so quickly. The week prior we had gone to do a PET-scan because her cancer numbers had gone up again. She lived in an apartment alone. I picked her up we went. She talked about all the ways she was trying to figure out how she could get to future appointments if she was looking at chemo again. She was worried about inconveniencing me. I said it was fine we’d figure it out. That was a Thursday. On Monday I was getting an endoscopy for a stomach cancer scare due to my own Lynch Syndrome. At the end of the endoscopy they told me it was a benign deposit. I text my mom to tell her and she said “well my news is not good. My kidney is failing I need to go to the emergency room they just called me.” What I didn’t know then is that her brain had already started to be impacted. She said she has to go Tuesday. I asked my sister-in-law to take her right away on Monday, because I had just come out of anesthesia and couldn’t drive, but my mom kept insisting she had to go Tuesday. 

Then my oldest hurt his foot Monday night. Screaming in pain. We barely made it through the night because he kept waking up in pain. So I had to take him to the doctor to get an X-ray the next day. Luckily, again, my amazing sister-in/law was able to take my mom. They spent the whole day at the hospital together they finally told her they were keeping my mom overnight. So she left. Figuring my mom was probably tired from being poked and prodded all day I’d go visit the following day. That night I got a call from her doctor telling me he recommended to have her on DNR (do not resuscitate) because she was not doing well and in his words “needed to rest.” I was shocked and sobbed. I called my brother. He told me he’d come to the hospital with my the next day. 

I got there Wednesday morning and in true fashion her first words to me were “why are you wasting your time here? We don’t know enough you don’t need to come visit.” It’s like she wasn’t completely aware of what was happening. I tried to talk through in different words what the doctor said. And again in true form she said “Well I hate that guy. I just need to be rehydrated and eat something and then I can just go home. I feel fine.” I stared at her seeing how incredibly yellow she was. Not only was her liver failing so were her kidneys. 

Did she know she was dying? I wasn’t sure. She also wasn’t making much sense when we spoke. My husband arrived shortly after me. When my brother arrived we all talked for awhile. She was struggling to eat her breakfast, I offered to help feed her. She replied, “it’ll be a cold day in hell before you’re spoon feeding me.” There she was.

Then the hospice care person came in, she asked to speak with us in the hallway. Told us she had a matter of weeks to live. It was crushing. When we went in the room my mom kept falling asleep so we all decided to leave. They told us they were moving her rooms, she heard and knew that’s what was happening. They told me the room she was being moved to. I told her I’d come back later.

Shortly after I got home,  she called me crying saying she couldn’t find me and didn’t know where she was. It was honestly the worst phone call I’ve ever had. I kept telling her she was safe and in the hospital. I called the nurse station they went to check on her and I stayed on the phone with my mom. They gave her something to calm down and she fell asleep while I was on the phone with her.

A couple hours later the doctor called again and said if I wanted to be with her when she passed I needed to get there immediately. I got my mother in law to come and my husband and I left as quickly as possible. We sat and talked to her and I told her stories. Talked about memories I had with her. She was asleep but could tell she could hear us. 

She lived through the night and I was back the next day. This time she was mostly unresponsive. I sat with her most of the day. I left and came back that night. I read her books she used to read to me as a little girl and some that I had written as a child. I said goodbye to her knowing that was it. I got the phone call at 3am. 

Honestly, I feel like I’ve been floating in the present since then. I’m here. I’m doing the insane amount of administrative tasks associated with death. I’m working. I’m being a mom but sometimes grief just hits. The other day it was walking past frozen turkeys at the grocery store realizing I’d never have holidays with my mom again. 

Somedays my dark humor has to take over. Like the day Kaiser called asking me “how she was recovering at home?” I said “well, not great.” And they said “oh what’s wrong?” I said “she’s dead.” All because they discharged her to readmit her as hospice care… apparently that didn’t translate to their system. They just saw discharged. 

I think that’s where I am right now. Somewhere between crying over frozen turkeys and making wildly inappropriate jokes about my dead mother because sometimes those are the only two options available to me.

There are moments when I understand that she’s gone. I picked up her ashes. I cleaned out her apartment. I’ve made the phone calls and filled out the forms and sent the emails that all require me to check some version of a box that says deceased. I know what happened.

And then there are moments when my brain clearly does not know at all.

I’ll think of something I need to tell her. I’ll see something she would like. Saturday comes and some part of me still knows that Saturday is when we go to Nana’s. Then I remember all over again that there is no Nana’s to go to anymore.

Maybe that’s what grief is right now. Not one enormous feeling that arrived when she died, but hundreds of tiny realizations waiting for me in places I haven’t gotten to yet.

The grocery store.

A book she read to me.

Her perfume.

A holiday that hasn’t happened yet.

Something funny my kids do that I instinctively want to tell her about.

For now, I don’t think I have some profound conclusion about losing my mom. I don’t think I’m supposed to. It has only been three weeks.

So I’m just here. Working. Parenting. Running. Filling out paperwork. Laughing at things that probably shouldn’t be funny. Crying because apparently frozen poultry can now emotionally destroy me.

And slowly learning what it means to live in a world where my mom existed for my entire life…

and now she doesn’t.