TheBanyanTree: Getting organised

[Sachet]

I think you handled a painful situation with such love, especially in 
that you gave your mother the gift of togetherness.

Sending you thoughts and prayers...

...Sachet

On 10/5/2013 4:08 AM, Janice Money wrote:
> 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.
>>
>
>