It's a bit of a rough weekend for us.
My family in Holland scattered my mom's ashes yesterday.. She passed away last June. A long story, bare with me.
My mother-in-law passed away this very weekend, a year ago.
She'd been living in a nursing home for years.. her will to live had been gone for ages. She refused to get out of bed. Would eat junk food her family sent her, even though she had diabetes and was horribly overweight.... it was hard to see. We had just moved her to a new nursing home, the previous one was not taking proper care of her and she'd gotten sick a few times there. Her room had mold and water damage there... and the food was just terrible.
We moved her to a much nicer nursing home. She had to share a room though, as it was a pricier nursing home and Medicare would only cover a shared room. She was MAD at first, she didn't like change.. but we told her that we hoped she would try and get out of bed and maybe try and use a wheelchair and participate in some activities, for the sake of her grandkids. We told the nurses she needed a little tough love.
Not two weeks later we got a call that they found her unconcious, blue and unresponsive, after they went to check on her roommate (a lady who needed around the clock care). They managed to get her back after CPR. The nurses told us she'd been doing better and actually had been sitting on the edge of her bed, trying to get up and in a wheelchair..
She was rushed to the hospital, but they did not know how long she had been deprived of oxygen... so they did not know if recovery was even possible. She spent several days on life support in the MICU and after much agonizing and speaking to a chaplain and praying for guidance, my husband decided to take her off. She was moved to a private room for her final moments. Ofcourse, his mom was a STUBBORN woman, and she did not pass away as expected. She actually lived for hours after taking her off, vitals barely dropping. We stayed with her through out the night. The nurses urged us to go home and sleep, we had our one year old with us and he'd been sleeping on the sofa in the room, while we sat with my mother-in-law. My husband spoke to her, said it was ok for her to go. We laughed and talked to her, telling her we knew she was stubborn (she was well aware of this and always claimed it with pride). We let our son sleep on her bed with her for a while, like he had done before.
After we went home, in the early morning hours, we got a call maybe two hours later. Her vitals were dropping rapidly. We rushed back, but she had passed before we made it back. Not surprising, she was a proud woman who likely would not have wanted her son to be there as she passed.
We made her final arrangements and I asked my mother if she would come to the funeral, as she had known my mother-in-law and this would provide a chance for her to meet all of my in-laws. She had planned to visit in October, but this would work out for her as well... she somehow managed to arrange a flight and fly in the very next day (from Holland). Everything happens for a reason, I fully believe this.
She stayed for three weeks, enjoying time with her grandchildren. We spoke about life and death.. and we came at peace, which was sort of odd. We always had a bit of a rocky relationship... but we were starting to see eye to eye more, both moms now... I had changed, I suppose.
During the last weekend of her stay she got ill. She already had a host of illnesses, COPD one of them, so we were used to her coughing and wheezing. The next day she had a fever and felt worse, she stayed in bed and I gave her some medicine... that night she was coughing up blood and sweating profusely, wheezing and shivering... I rushed her to the ER. Her oxygen level was 74%!
After several hours she was diagnosed with pnuemonia and I told her she'd be good as new in no time. I stayed with her until dawn, then they said they were going to keep her another day and I told her not to worry. She urged me to go home, get some sleep. I told the doctors to call me if they needed me, her English was pretty minimal and she would need me to translate if they wanted to communicate. I went home, slept a few hours and came back with some of her things for her. She couldn't talk because she had a mask on with breathing treatment. I was going to stay a while, but she urged us to just go home, she's fine, going to rest etc. I again urged the nurses that they need to call me if they need to communicate with her, because her English is very minimal.
Then we went home...
That night the hospital called. Her oxygen levels just wouldn't get high enough, so they were going to sedate her and put her on a ventilator for a day or two, so her lungs could heal. But, not to worry.
The next day she was in MICU... the room across the one my mother-in-law was in only a month ago. And from there it just got worse... pnuemonia became stapph... stapph became MRSA... What was supposed to be 'just a day or so' became 'We're trying to wake her, but she's not waking up'.... I drove her to the ER on Monday, on Saturday she passed away. The MRSA had ravaged her already weakened lungs, moved to her brain... her kidneys... everything.
I still have trouble accepting the situation... I was mad at the hospital, it seemed they weren't as cautious with MRSA as they should have been... and it seemed they downplayed the situation. I kept getting different answers from different doctors. They whole situation was just insane....
I told the nurses that we had lost my mother-in-law only weeks before, in the same ward. They couldn't believe it.
Strangely enough, my mom had said in the ER "If something happens, I don't want to go back to Europe"... I think she knew. She was swimming with us... working in the garden.. only day before she got sick. She was an active woman, despite her health issues.. I didn't see it coming. Ofcourse, the family didn't agree and her body was flown back to Europe. We tried to arrange for us to go to her funeral, but we couldn't afford it, nor was it possible to get travel papers in such a short amount of time. My oldest brother told me that doctors in the Netherlands adviced against us traveling, since we had been exposed to MRSA... but I think he was scared of it, his wife was 8 months pregnant... So I did not get to go to the funeral. Kind of glad. My mom HATED the idea of a funeral. She didn't want flowers when she was dead, she wanted them while she was alive. She wasn't on good terms with her family, yet all came to her funeral. A funeral she didn't want in the first place...... I suppose they needed it for closure, but it was not respecting her last wishes, for sure.
And now, her ashes have been scattered. Again with all her family there.. people she had pushed away so many times.
My mom had a lot of mental issues... something that caused our relationship to be a bit rocky. Many times I had to be the adult, even though she did not see that.. she made some bad decisions... and made life hard for me and my little brother. She had been suicidal at different times in her past.. the last time she had set the house on fire with my brother in it (he had become mentally ill over the last years, something I cannot help but think may have been caused by our youth). He was arrested, as the cops thought he did it, even though he was putting the fire out. My mom had some minor burns in her face.. my brother on the other hand wents through very rough treatment by police. I felt very bad for him, he had become intensely fearful of going outside, even phonecalls... and here he was drug to jail, strip searched, interrogated etc. I was in the US, so there was nothing I could do. My mom was admitted to a mental hospital, but escaped.. Janked her IV out and just walked out..... Police were dredging rivers and stuff... apparently she finally made it home and they decided to just keep her in the house and my brother spent two days sleeping in front of her door, to keep her in her room...... Screwed up stuff. She wasn't allowed to travel to the US for two years due to that little stunt. It's only one example.... she made life tough on us kids... but she taught us a lot too.....
I miss her, even though I have hated her at times... Life is so weird and screwed up. SO many times she wanted to die, and as she was finally recovering, finally straightening out, coming to peace.. she dies.
I worry about my brother, he just turned 29, but he's just a kid. He lives in a sort of half-way home... It's a group home. He has no money at all.. he has had some issues with drugs. He used to be 'normal', and one day he just snapped. He couldn't leave the house, heard voices, became suicidal, just terrified of the world. Not sure what happened, just one day he couldn't function anymore. He didn't shower for a year, stopped shaving, stopped caring for himself. He didn't leave his room unless my mom made him (she didn't know what to do with him... toxic situation, which is why she decided to set the house on fire with him in it). He's doing better now, he works parttime.. my older brother is looking out for him some. I feel bad, I wish I could do SOMETHING for him.. My older brother hates me because I moved to the US, but I had to get out of there... my mom was toxic for all of us. I used to have nightmares about her... sometimes still do, and I'm 31!
*sigh*
Venty vent vent.
Mother's day is not a happy day for me... it should be, I have two little kiddos I love. I'm a happy adult, I am a miserable child. Maybe some day I can let my past go. I love the present, I love the future, I hate the past..
Your mother's death is so sad, just as she was becoming more whole. I'm glad she had some nice times with you and that she clearly felt cared for at the end.
Weird problem the past. I remember having a very wise therapist who, when I showed up saying my past felt like a really awful complicated heavy backpack I was carrying around, and I presumed that the work I would have to do with him would involve opening the backpack and looking at everything inside, including very painful stuff, he said, "Or you could just dump it and walk on without it."
Which is what I then did.
