Time Is Brief

6.26.07
Today is my Mom’s Birthday. She would have been 61 today. Three summers ago she died from colon cancer. She was diagnosed on April 15 and she was gone by July 10. Three short months and she aged about 100 years. My mom had never looked her years, but in the last month of her life age caught up to her two-fold. My heart didn’t even have time to break while she was sick. Things just went too fast to process.
The summer before my Mom had married a lovely man who loved her and treated her so well. They were so much alike even though there was a 12-year difference in their ages. Finally it seemed as if everything in her life had fallen in to place. But, no, no it hadn’t. Beginning in April after her surgery, I made frequent trips from the city I lived in to the little mountain town that she had made her home with her man. I remember when I arrived at her house after a five-hour drive. She answered the door and I almost didn’t recognize her. She had cut off all her hair in anticipation of the chemotherapy alopecia. The shades were drawn, and she was wearing dark old clothes, with sleeves even though it was hot outside. She cried and she said that she was a sick old woman with cancer. As the disease progressed I would so often hear her say things like that. That she would never be beautiful again, who would love her now? In spite of this, I don’t know if she ever really realized how sick she was. The day before she died she talked to me about what she wanted to do with the window blinds in her bedroom. In the end I think that is a good thing.
Because I am a Nurse, I have seen plenty of suffering. How is anyone supposed to know what the best plan of action is for someone who is dying? I’ve seen people hold on with every ounce of strength they have. Their family members enduring unreasonable amounts of pain and torture because family can’t let of the one they love. Now, on the other side of that bitter coin, I sometimes feel as if I would give my right arm to have one more day with my Mom. Instead, I worked with a wonderful hospice nurse to make sure that she no pain, and that she was comfortable to the very end. Here is where my quandary begins. Did I shorten her life? Could things have been different for her? What would it have been like if she had lived another month, or two? What if I had agreed to a feeding tube, or to another, more aggressive surgery, that would have left her with a colostomy, but would have left her alive? How long can someone tolerate unrelenting nausea? Is it worth it to put up with it if it gives you another month, another week? I don’t know, I just don’t know.
Sometimes I wish I had been way more aggressive with life prolonging care. Other days, after particularly brutal shifts at work I’m glad that she went as she did. Without pain, surrounded by her people and her animars. Oh but I miss her, every day I do.
When things started to go bad, Mom’s husband Matt called me and told me that he was worried. I flew out to a little town on the western slope of Colorado that had previously been my happy home while I was going to school. Matt met me at the airport and we drove in uncomfortable silence in his beat up pick up truck, the 150 miles to my Mom. When I arrived, Mom was glad to see me, but kept saying that she was fine; I didn’t need to take the trouble. Through that long night she kept having periods of apnea, but kept on breathing. At one point during the night she woke up and was very lucid. She said that she had finished her long sleep, and that she was awake now. Matt came out of the bedroom and we made some crushed ice (her favorite thing), and just sat around chatting, at 2 am in the morning. Mom went to sleep again, but the next morning woke up for her crushed ice. The hot summer day moseyed on. I went for a run with Matt’s sister Louisa. I told Mom where we were going, she told me to be careful. We got home about 1400 (two pm). About 1600 (four pm), Matt went out to the store to get more provisions, i.e.: tequila and lime for margaritas. Right before he left, Matt told Mom where he was going, and that he would be right back… He left, and my Mom took a big breath, and then one more, and then she didn’t, anymore.