TheBanyanTree: Getting organised

[Janice Money]

We went down again on Friday 21st.  These 3 day trips away to see Mum have
always been rush, rush affairs.  There's the 1.45am flight; 4 hours of
trying, and failing, to sleep; pick up the hire car; get through Sydney
traffic (a real shock when you're used to driving in Darwin); have breakfast
at one of the southern suburbs' vastly multiplying coffee shops; drop in to
see my mother in law; drive down to Wollongong; go looking for some tasty
treat to take to Mum; visit her; book in at the hotel, unpack, get dinner
and collapse into bed; get up; go looking for some other tasty treat to take
to Mum; spend the day with her; get dinner and collapse into bed again; get
up, pack and check out; repeat efforts to find tasty treat; visit Mum; say
goodbye; head back to Sydney to take mother in law out to lunch; spend
seemingly hours waiting in appalling traffic jams at Ramsgate and Brighton
le Sands on the way back to the airport; catch the 7.20pm flight back and
eventually fall into our own bed sometime after midnight.  

 

This last trip was made even more rushed by the fact that Paul, in trying to
park the hire car outside his mother's home, managed to hit the steel plate
covering the opening into a storm water drain and put a hole in the side
wall of the front tyre.  So in addition to everything else, we (well, he)
also had to change the tyre and make all the arrangements to have it
replaced which meant time spent both ringing around and waiting around, and
leaving and going back and then more waiting around.

 

But I am so glad we went.  When we entered her room she was dozing.  I said,
"Hello Mum," and she opened her eyes. I saw the light of recognition go on
in them as she gave me a big, happy smile. "Hello dear," she said. 

 

Ah!  She was so thin!  I could see both bones of her forearms and every bone
of her shoulders.  She couldn't take liquids anymore unless they were
thickened with gelatine.  She wasn't interested in solid food.  When she
spoke her voice would quickly fade to a whisper.  She drifted in and out of
sleep.

 

The next morning she was more alert and was making more sense, perhaps
because her doctor had stopped all drugs apart from analgesics.  We brought
her some Milo ice cream which she liked well enough to take several small
spoonsful.  Certainly she liked it better than the "complete food" chocolate
pudding the home provided.  Then my brother turned up with coffee.  Though
she had difficulty getting any of it down she sighed with pleasure at the
taste and I decided to make it my business to get her some coffee ice cream.

 

By the afternoon Mum was drifting in and out of sleep again.  Paul went off
to check on the tyre and I sat holding Mum's hand.  In the intervals when
she was awake I told her that she had been a wonderful mother, an excellent
teacher and a great support in times of trouble.  She said, "I didn't know
that."  Under my huge burden of guilt I thought, "Better late than never".
Had I really not told her that before?  Probably. 

 

When she was asleep I watched her breathe.  She would take a deep breath
followed by several increasingly shallow breaths, stop breathing at all for
20 seconds or so and then start the cycle again.  It's called Cheyne-Stokes
respiration and is often seen in people who are approaching death.  It's
also quite unnerving because the pauses are so long you're never quite sure
if it will start again. I found myself staring at the pulse in her neck.  It
was reassuringly strong and regular.    

 

On the way back to the hotel, we hunted through the big supermarket at
Unanderra. No coffee ice cream.  Early the next morning we tried the
supermarkets at Figtree.  No coffee ice cream.  But there was a Wendy's and
it had something better - coffee gelato.

 

Mum managed to eat two whole standard scoops and said it was delicious, so
the effort was worthwhile.  We sat with her till it was time to leave to
catch the plane home.  She looked sad about that but brightened when Paul
told her we'd be back for her birthday on the 13th.  She died last Sunday.  

 

Getting ready for the funeral has been almost as hard as watching her die.
Of course it hasn't taken as long but the strain, beginning about three
months ago, has been much more concentrated because of interpersonal
difficulties that arose and that have required tip toe care in managing.

 

Mum was a Christian and a regular church goer.  Until recently she was a
member of a weekly Bible Study group. For several years, until she moved
away from Sydney, she attended a Christian convention held annually in the
Blue Mountains and she was interested enough in at least some of the
presentations to discuss them afterwards with me.  Yet my sister and brother
somehow got it into their heads that a funeral honouring Mum should be kept
as free as possible of anything to do her faith, as though that had nothing
to do with who she was.  The funeral, they said, was for the living, not the
dead.  Too bad then, I thought, that most of living who would come to the
funeral would be Christians who knew Mum as a Christian.

 

Luckily, I suppose, they began voicing these opinions while Mum was still
able to say something, however vague, about the matter herself.  So I did
what I didn't want to have to do and asked her what sort of funeral she
wanted.  Ever amenable, she said that whatever we decide would be fine.  I
asked if she wanted prayers.  "Oh yes," she said, "I want prayers."  It was
all I could get but good enough.  Then I rang Mum's beloved elder sister,
the lovely Aunty Ed who will be 90 in February and is still in excellent
shape, and asked her if she and Mum had ever discussed these things.  "Not
really," she said, "But of course she would want a Christian funeral!  She
was a Christian." 

 

With that ammunition I began my softly, softly efforts to win them over, or
at least persuade them to acquiesce in giving Mum what she would have
expected to have.  And now it seems that succeeding in giving her that,
without alienating anybody important to her, was just a matter of endurance
combined with good manners and not fighting over what is essentially
unimportant.  Neither of them really wanted the responsibility of organising
the service itself, not after they have both become exhausted from the
strain of regularly visiting Mum for the last 9 months.  

 

So I've made the slide show DVD, organised the minister, produced the order
of service and left it to be printed so that it will be ready for folding
and collating tomorrow and packing in my suitcase on Sunday.  We fly out in
the wee hours of Monday morning.  There's a family dinner on Monday night,
the funeral is on Tuesday morning and by very late Wednesday night, God
willing, I'll be back home, in my own bed and getting ready for the Thursday
call to book the start of my radiotherapy.  

 

After Christmas Paul and I are having a holiday, on our own.  It will be our
first in 7 years.  I'd like to go overseas but right now the thought of
organising a passport is too much.