I have told about my father’s passing here on the blog. It was a tough day the day my mother called to say that he had passed away. But what followed caught me totally off guard and feeling quite down.
After my dad passed away, we found ourselves making lots of trips to Jamestown to help my mother sort through more paperwork. My, oh my….so much paperwork! It seemed like a never-ending exercise, filling out forms and figuring out policies and such, Thankfully, Mark has a tenacity that causes him to look mountains of paperwork in the eye and work right through them! Mark was a great help and Mom totally appreciated everything he did.
In August, Mom said she just had such a hard time…she couldn’t ram through her housework like she did previously. She confided in me during a phone call that she wasn’t her normal self. She made an appointment for August 15th to have a heart catheterization done to check her heart for blockage or see what was causing her to drag so.
When I found out about the appointment, I told Mark I wanted to go alone to Jamestown so I could go with her to the appointment. Mark wanted to know if I was sure I really wanted to go alone, but I insisted. I am so glad I did….
I can still see Mom walking into the hospital alone. Even though she had complained she couldn’t walk twenty feet without feeling the need to sit down, her determination to get this figured out far surpassed any fatigue she might have felt. At nearly eighty-six years old, she looked so stylish in her white jeans, black and white striped knit shirt and sandals.
I had the valet park the car and my brother and I ran inside to catch up with Mom. She fidgeted a bit, wondering what was taking so long. Finally, she was taken in for the procedure. I won’t get into all the details, but the bottom line was that the doctor said her heart just didn’t have enough “squeeze”. She made it through the procedure, but was admitted into the hospital.
Throughout her stay, we were called twice to say Mom wasn’t expected to make it through the night. We made the long journey the first time to say our goodbyes, but she wasn’t ready to let go just yet. The second time, Carly and her family traveled to be with her. Still, she wasn’t ready to leave planet Earth.
On the ninth day of her hospital stay, the doctor called us and told us Mom needed to be moved to a nursing home. Mark spoke with the doctor and I listened in to the conversation, feeling my heart sinking. There was no way Mom would ever want to be admitted to a nursing home. However, at the end of the call, Mark and I called the home where my dad had been for his last months of life and began to make arrangements.
Well, Mom was something else. She seemed to manage to get things done her way. I knew in my heart of hearts she would never, ever want to enter a nursing home. If that doctor had even mentioned a nursing home in her semi non responsive state, she had enough! That evening, I received “the call” that Mom had passed away. Even in the heartbreak of hearing this, I had to smile, knowing Mom had things done *her* way!
I had lost both of my parents within an eight month span of time. It seemed so overwhelming, but I am so grateful that I had them so long!! Even though I miss them, I just thank God for every single day I was able to have them! My parents were such good parents.
The sadness didn’t end with losing both parents, though. Two days after Mom passed away, I had to make a trip to the vet to bid farewell to my dear little Murphy. He had been diagnosed with melanoma about eighteen months before and he awakened me in the middle of the night, crying out in pain and I knew it was time to say goodbye to my sweet little Scottie boy. I had held up so well at the time my parents passed, but when the vet tech came for Murphy, I felt as though my heart was going to break into a million tiny pieces.
I will end this entry here, as I hope I haven’t reduced you, dear reader, to tears. This was a year of some heavy events, but it was not all bad. In my next post, I will bring some happy news!
