TheBanyanTree: Getting organised

[Linda DeMerle]

Janice, so very sorry for your loss.  I am glad, though, for moments of clarity so the two of you could be together.  Good for you for pressing for her to have her funeral her way.


On 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.  
>