TheBanyanTree: Getting organised

[Kitty Park]

I admire the way you have dealt with your mother's failing health and
death, especially when you had other important personal issues to consider.
 Hopefully your siblings appreciate the thoughtful way you arranged your
mom's funeral, knowing that you had the views of several to consider.

Keep us posted on your therapy.  You have a cheering section here, and we
will encourage you through to its completion and success.

Kitty
<mzzkitty at gmail.com>kcp-parkplace.blogspot.com
 <http://parkplaceohio.com>



On Fri, Oct 4, 2013 at 4:31 AM, Janice Money <pmon3694 at bigpond.net.au>wrote:

> 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.
>
>