TheBanyanTree: It never rains

[Janice Money]

Again, thank you all for your kind messages of encouragement and support.

When my father died it was for me as Linda said.  It rocked my world.
Actually, it rocked it right off some of its foundations.  The damage took
years to repair.  But with my mother it's different.  

Mum's mother was a widow for 20 years and Mum repeatedly said she didn't
want that to happen to her.  It didn't.  She's been a widow for over 23
years.  She's had a full life in that time but has never stopped being
lonely for Dad.  

She loved to read - fiction and non-fiction - and to do crossword puzzles,
the bigger the better.  But a couple of years or so ago she stopped doing
both.  She couldn't remember what she'd read and she was finding it harder
and harder to remember the words corresponding to the clues.  Then that loss
of words began to affect her speech.  At first it happened only if she got
anxious and that made the problem even worse.  It was hard to watch her
struggling in her frustration and distress.  And then, of course, the
problems gradually got worse.  By July her sentences made little sense and
now she seems to have given up trying to take part in a conversation
preferring to sit quietly and listen to her visitors talking together.  I
really miss my long morning chats with her.  At least she still remembers my
voice.  

For most of this time Mum still had her other love; gardening.  She was
proud of being known in her street as the lady with the lovely garden.  Even
in the nursing home, in the beginning, she helped replant some garden beds
but now, my brother says, she's too weak even to walk out to the gardens let
alone to walk around them and see how everything is growing.

So I guess I would say that I think that, for my mother, death will be a
release and I hope it comes softly, before all the physiological
derangements caused by her tumour have time to torment her.  She's sleeping
more now so it may be soon.

Janice  


-----Original Message-----
From: thebanyantree-bounces at lists.remsset.com
[mailto:thebanyantree-bounces at lists.remsset.com] On Behalf Of Linda DeMerle
Sent: Thursday, 12 September 2013 6:40 AM
To: A comfortable place to meet other people and exchange your own
*original* writings. 
Subject: Re: TheBanyanTree: It never rains



Dear Janice, I am so sorry.  I've also lost my mother to cancer, probably 2
1/2 months from diagnosis until her death.  Two years ago, I lost my aunt,
her sister in the same way.  My aunt was another mother to me.  She
weathered cancer for over 7 years until my uncle, her husband, died and she
joined him, suddenly, exactly a month later.

I don't care how old your mother is, it is hard.  My mother was young and it
rocked my world.  My aunt was wondering how the heck long people expected
her to live, anyway, and although I, of course, knew that I would have to
"let her go" because eventually she'd be taken from me, anyway and did I
want to be a complete, unprepared mess or a realistic mess.we did as my
mother and I did and tried to look into that future without fear. I was not
at her bedside when she died, all happened so quickly with her seeming very
well to in the hospital the next day and gone the following.but I felt
peace.  At first.

For sure it is a journey.  I am going to be thinking of you both.  As
someone said to me as I left work to race to New York to be with my mom.I
hope (and pray) that it goes as well as it can go.

Love,

LL

On Sep 11, 2013, at 3:11 AM, Janice Money <pmon3694 at bigpond.net.au> wrote:

> On top of everything else, my mother is dying.  She had bowel cancer 
> about 6 years ago.  Follow up showed no secondaries but there was one.  
> It finally declared itself or rather, was detected, just before last 
> Christmas when Mum got carted off to hospital for investigation of 
> weight loss and several episodes of night wandering, the last of which 
> involved her being found at 2.30am at Mt Ousley as she marched, 
> handbag over her arm, up the F6 towards Sydney while wearing odd shoes,
her pyjama bottoms and a light jacket.
> 
> This all happened a week or so before we were supposed to take Mum 
> with us to Bermagui, where we'd spent our honeymoon, to help us 
> celebrate our 30th anniversary.  Doing that would also allow my sister 
> some time off to go to Perth for a wedding.
> 
> We knew she had started wandering and were ready with plans to try and 
> keep her safe in strange surroundings.  My mother in law would be 
> coming to share a bedroom with her and be a familiar face in case Mum 
> woke at night.  We would take turns sleeping in shifts.  We would lock 
> all exits and keep strategic lights on at night.  I'd even bought some Blu
Tack and 'Ladies'
> signs to put on the bathroom doors.  But by the time we got to 
> Wollongong it was plain, for both medical and nursing home placement 
> reasons, that she would have to stay within the system.  Only weeks 
> before Mum had been talking about finding her swimming costume to bring
with her on the holiday.
> Now she couldn't remember where she was or what she'd had for breakfast.
> 
> The secondary is in the left lobe of Mum's liver.  The oncologist at 
> the hospital reckoned she had 4 to 6 months left.  I thought he was 
> being too pessimistic.  Everything works slower in old people.  My 
> grandfather survived 10 years after surgery for stomach cancer.  In 
> young people that's a very fast killer.  Six months will usually do it.
> 
> But it's beginning to look as if the oncologist's guess wasn't too far
out.
> The last time I visited her, in late July, I noticed that my mother's 
> feet were very swollen.  Often that's a sign of heart failure, but I 
> didn't think that was the likely cause since Mum has never had heart 
> trouble.  I thought that maybe the secondary had enlarged enough to 
> cause some obstruction of the inferior vena cava. The visiting GP had 
> already started treating her for heart failure and hypertension but a 
> week ago I heard from my sister that Mum's feet remain very swollen 
> and he's changed the treatment - to what, I don't know.  And today she 
> wrote that Mum's skin and the whites of her eyes are turning yellow.  
> Given where Mum's tumour is, if it's big enough to cause obstruction 
> to bile outflow it's definitely big enough to obstruct venous return to
the heart.
> 
> Tomorrow I see the radiation oncologist for a treatment planning session.
> Once a date is set for my treatment to start I'll organise a date 
> before that to go back down and see my mother again.  It could be the 
> last time I get that chance.
> 
> Janice
> 
>