Blue Days

Some days are just sad days….

Yesterday was one of those days for me.  I am not sure what exactly triggered it, but I started trying to picture what life will be like without mom around.  I thought about Christmas (her favorite holiday).  I thought about how often my siblings and I might talk with one another or be together.  I thought about the times when I need a pick me up and what it will be like when mom isn’t there to do her job.  It was all overwhelming and when mom asked if I was alright, I pretty much lost it.  I hugged her and bawled until you get that stupid crying headache.  I told her I don’t want her to go and that I would prefer if she just stayed alive forever.  I suppose it was a good thing, letting go of some of that emotional baggage.

Mom said she was sorry that I had to sacrifice my life at the moment to take care of her, but that she didn’t know what she would do without me.  I have, to this point, tried very hard to keep my emotions in check around her because I never want her to feel that this situation is a burden for me.  Yes it is difficult, but definitely not a burden.  Yesterday I just could not hold it back any longer and had to let her know that I was hurting in my heart. That I am going to miss her terribly when she is gone and even though we are fortunate to get to prepare for the end, that is a mixed blessing.  It also means that we have to begin the grieving, which feels like a distraction from the goal of living the fullest life possible.  Perhaps it’s not really a distraction, but it feels that way.

While I don’t know for sure why I ended up thinking about how things will be after mom is gone, it could be because I feel like the end may be approaching faster now.  Because I spend so much time with mom, I see little changes that worry me.  Her weight continues to drop and she is getting tired more easily now.  The past week or so she has had more difficulty sleeping.  She has also had more pain recently.  Next week she will have her PET scan and MRI and then at the end of the week she will meet with her oncologists to find out how things are.  My gut feeling is that there will be little or no cancer left in her brain, but that her liver is not in great shape.  I hope I am wrong on the liver part.  It would be wonderful if there were no new spots and the ones she already had were greatly decreased in size.  My gut also tells me that the chemo oncologist is going to recommend no further treatments.  I think there would need to be a significant enough change in the size of her tumors for them to do more chemotherapy.  I can see a scenario where the doctor says the risks of chemo now outweigh the benefits.  These of course are my fears.  I so hope that I am wrong.

I am also concerned, now that we have a lot of the ducks in a row, that mom will feel better about the end and her mood will change and hasten the process.  We got the estate planning loose ends tied and there is a clear picture of what needs to happen when mom is gone.  We have her (and dad’s) plot picked out and just need to pay for it.  The only real thing left is to look at caskets and determine which one she would like, but we keep putting that off.  Fortunately those last two things, if we never get to them, will be relatively easy to deal with after mom is gone.  Outside of concerns mom has for her kids, from our conversations I can tell she is getting more comfortable with the end.  I am just glad that, for now, her desire to stick around appears to be greater than her desire to go be with dad.

She did get some mental relief today when she found out during a meeting with Social Security that she is approved for part of dad’s benefits.  Its funny though, back in April when we first talked with Social Security and they setup an appointment for June 19th we thought, “my goodness that is a heck of a long way away”.  On the way to the meeting we were talking about how quickly that time has gone by.  Time flies too quickly and it would be great if we could slow it down when we wanted to 🙂