TheBanyanTree: Getting organised

[Janice Money]

Thank you all for your kind words.  It was a great blessing to be able to
see my mother before she went and to be able to help her in some small way.
I wanted to be able to say a proper goodbye but didn't really know what that
would be.  Now I think that saying thank you, you were a great mother, was
it.  She served her family even in her dying.  It was so important that we
had to put aside our differences and resentments for her sake.  There's been
give and take on all sides.  It  brought us back together.   

And Gail, I've been wishing for that magic word too.  I'm sure we all have.

Janice   


-----Original Message-----
From: thebanyantree-bounces at lists.remsset.com
[mailto:thebanyantree-bounces at lists.remsset.com] On Behalf Of Sally Larwood
Sent: Saturday, 5 October 2013 4:57 PM
To: A comfortable place to meet other people and exchange your own
*original* writings.
Subject: Re: TheBanyanTree: Getting organised

I am so sorry for your loss Janice, but how wonderful you were able to visit
your mum and have such a lovely visit just before she went. It also sounds
as though you've managed to produce a lovely service. 

On top of that, so sad as it is, you'll be able to spend time with your
family. 

Good luck with your treatment. 

Thinking if you and praying for you. 

Sal 

Sent from my iPad 

> On 4 Oct 2013, at 18:31, 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.
>