funeral today

I'm too exhausted and drained to talk about this today, except to say that it was a lovely service and I'm really grateful to everyone who has passed along their condolences and given support etc etc. Thankyou. Read more...

the end

My Mum died peacefully this morning at 8am.

Oh how I will miss her. Read more...

it's 5.30am Sunday morning

I just phoned the hospice and Mum is resting peacefully with Dad beside her holding her hand.

The last few days have been awful. Mum has deteriorated so very quickly. Last Sunday she was up and dressed and spent several hours reading Miss 3 her story books - a perfectly normal Sunday. On Monday she was walking around the supermarket. By Wednesday she was not really getting out of bed anymore. Thursday morning when I went to visit she was just very very sleepy but having trouble remembering whether she'd taken all her pills or not and starting to worry that she didn't know what was best anymore. Friday morning she woke very disoriented and was admitted to the Hospice about lunch time for, at that stage, a few days to get her pain meds etc under control. I saw her Friday evening and, although she recognised me, she struggled to say what she was really trying to say and would get lost in the middle of the sentence.

Yesterday (was it really only yesterday?) I picked my brother P up from the airport and after dropping his bags at Mum and Dad's we went straight to the hospice, our sister Sh getting there from Christchurch only a few minutes before us. Mum spent all of yesterday just sleeping, although sometimes when we spoke to her she would 'hm' in response and her eyes would open. About lunch time I came home to give the baby a milk feed and get some food and cuddle Miss 3 and Dad went down to the lounge for a break. P was with Mum when she suddenly sat up and asked for a drink of water. He helped her have a drink and when he told her he loved her she looked at him and said "I know, I love you too". Sh came back in from getting a drink in time to get a kiss too, and then they let Dad have some time alone with Mum while she was awake. So that's really really good that they got there in time to actually connect with Mum.

Then yesterday evening about 7pm we got a 'get here now' call from the hospice, so we all rushed in (Dad and my aunt were already there) and said our goodbyes, but she was quite peaceful and just kept on breathing. The Pastoral Assistant from our church came and spent some time with us, which was really good - the right thing at the right time for my Dad who had been anxious that Mum would die before the minister arrived. (Our vicar is on holiday this week. The Pastoral Assistant is a lovely santa-claus type man who had met Mum several times through her work). Dad stayed in the hospice overnight - they are absolutely marvelous there and set up a bed right beside Mum's for him. Today our other sister Ch and another brother T are driving through from Southland and Central to spend the day. Our brother E is in Oz and was over only a couple of weeks ago, and will be again at Christmas, so won't be over again this week. It is so so good that E and E got to spend some good time with Mum while she was well. I think that's much more important than being here right now.

The grief comes in waves and I'm learning to just roll with it when it comes. I am going to miss her so very very much.

But under it all I have a strong current of peace. The concept of heaven is all very intellectual until someone you love dies, and then it becomes very important indeed. As i saw in a wee poem in the sanctuary at the hospice - "It does us no harm to believe this". And, more than this, I know that Mum loved Jesus and that she's safe wherever she is. As for praying for healing, i realise that I have prayed for that for months and months, and that Monday's thing was about me coming to a point of letting go and leaving it up to God. I may go into the whys and wherefores of this at a later date but it's not important for me to do that now - what is important is that I go and cuddle my children and husband and get started with the day Read more...

mum is in the hospice

I may be a bit erratic in my posting over the next wee while Read more...

mum update

We went and had our usual Sunday lunch catchup at my parents' house yesterday.

Mum is not doing so good. She's turned all yellow since I last saw her on Thursday. Makes sense since the most active bit of her cancer is in her liver, but it was still a shock. When the decline in her health is just gradual - a little more tired, a little more gaunt-looking - it's easy to pretend that we're going to just stay in this limbo place forever. That this is the new 'normal' and we can just adjust and carry on.

But of course that's not the case. Every week she's more tired than the week before. Every week there's a new problem to talk to the doctor about. Her pain is back, and she's back on morphine to deal with it. I asked her the other day if she would consider another round of chemo, just as a pain-relief option, and she finally let her shield down just a crack. Just enough to let her despair show through. She's only got a handful of options and they all suck - nothing is going to make her well.

I don't even know if I have the faith to pray for her healing. Intellectually I know that He can do it. I do actually know people who have experienced miraculous healing. But He doesn't heal everyone (don't ask me why - if I knew that I suspect I'd know all there is to know), and I'm not sure I could deal with the despair of my going out on a limb and then having my request denied.
Far easier to reconcile myself to the fact that we all die in body, and that everyone's got to die of something.

Which also feels like an enormous cop-out.

crappy crappy crappy. I know what's going on here. For those of you who aren't Christian this may seem weird, but I'm not actually in the midst of a crisis of faith. What's happening is that I'm gradually being drawn towards praying for my Mum's healing, and this part of the process is just about positioning the idea in my mind. I always do this - my first response to most suggestions (even of things that I want) is a knee-jerk 'NO'. But once I get used to the idea and consider all the ramifications I usually come around to it - so long as I haven't irrevocably burnt any bridges by then.

blimmin.

well that's enough rummaging around in my entrails for one day. time to go outside and get the chickweed out from around my veggies. Read more...

Memory Book

Over the last few weeks I have been writing a 'memory book' story book for my girls about their Nana. I can't remember where I first read of this idea, but it seemed a good one.
The idea is that for kids to process grief they like to hear stories about their loss over and over again - kinda to help them fix it in their heads and explain it to themselves. And because it can all get a bit emotionally exhausting to tell those stories from memory each time it is simpler to write it down. This also means that other people can tell the stories when I am not in the right headspace to talk about my Mum.

Now, Mum is still with us (which is a daily blessing). However, time is precious and sooner or later I would be needing to write a memory book. So I decided to do it now - while I'm not dealing with my own grief too much.

What I've done is write a wee story - "This is me and my sister with our Nana..." and illustrate it with photos of my Mum with the girls. I just stuck the photos on A4 paper, wrote it in pen and placed the pages in plastic sheet-protectors. I also went around and took more photos as needed ("This is their house"). What was excellent was that it pointed out some major gaps in our photo collection - I found that we didn't have any at all of Mum and Dad and both girls in the same photo, that sort of thing. So we were able to get some of those.

For now, it's a story about Nana and the girls and what they do together and how Nana does knitting etc etc. It will only take the addition of a few more pages to turn it into a memory book - which I should be able to manage when necessary. I also plan to do the same for the other grandparents.

I like to think that my kids will remember my Mum after she's gone. Read more...

About Mum

So. Back to Mum's health. It's not good. This last lot of chemo was really only to try to delay the inevitable. The Drs were going to give her a bout of drugs about once every 3 or 4 weeks for maybe 4 or 5 months and see how it went. But the first try hit her so very hard that she ended up in hospital for 5 days with a white blood cell count of zero. This is not uncommon, but to cut a long story short Mum has decided that she'd rather have a few short months to live and feel tired and ill than have a few short months to live and feel utterly atrocious.

So Mum's decided to stop the chemotherapy. She can take it up again whenever she feels like it, but I don't think she will. She looks so frightened of it when she talks about it.

Hard as it is to watch her dying, I think she's made the right choice. Don't know what I'd do in her situation, but whatever will make her happy over the next few months is what she needs to do. My emotions about it are a bit detached at the moment. I have days where I'll be hanging out the laundry on the clothesline or whatever and suddenly I'll be bawling my eyes out because I'm going to miss her so very much. But mostly I veer away from the abyss. Right now I can only deal with my grief in little packets.

But that's okay - loss is not something you ever get over - you just find a way of making it a part of you so that you can keep getting up each day. I don't really believe in 'closure' or 'moving on' from something so big as this. 'Closure' seems to imply that you're somehow finished with your grief and your memories, and that just seems wrong. I will always miss my Mum. There will always be a Mum-shaped gap where she should be.

In a way that's kinda comforting.

But not very Read more...

Death and Dying

Miss 3 and I went to the cemetery today. It is 2 years since my Nana died of cancer and I wanted to go put some flowers by her headstone. I wasn't sure about taking our child along with me, as the whole concept of death is a daunting one to have to explain - although it's not entirely foreign to her - she does know that people die, and that means that their bodies stop working and the bit that they think and feel with goes to be with Jesus. But what she might actually think that means I don't know.

I came to the conclusion it was a good idea to take her with me. You see, my Mum (Miss 3's beloved Nana) has cancer too, and will probably die within the year - it has spread through her liver and lymph system and is spreading very fast. She may even die within the week, having been admitted into hospital today and put in isolation to try and head off a terrible case of flu she's come down with while being on chemo.

So in the light of that, Merl and I decided that a trip to the cemetery to put flowers on my Nana's grave and to have a good cry and a talk about the good memories I have of my Nana would be good. So that's what we did. I had a cry and explained that I missed my Nana (her Great-Nana) very much and was sad that she had died, and also that she had been very unwell so when she died she had left her sick body behind and didn't need to be sick any more, so that was actually a good thing.

Perhaps this will help us all grieve a little easier for my Mum when the time comes. who knows. We just do what we think is best at the time. Read more...