Processing

 

   I haven't really taken time to process the events of the last couple of years. So much has happened, and I just haven't taken the time to sort through it all. I do my best processing in writing, though, so if you're up for a bit of a lengthy read about my feelings about things, then here goes.

  It all started in April of 2018 when I was living in Manchester, England, and I found out that my Mom had been diagnosed with Inflammatory Breast Cancer, a rare and very aggressive kind of cancer. When she first met with her oncologist, in May of 2018, he told her that without treatment she would have about 3 to 6 months, and if she did treatments she would have 12 to 16 months. I didn't know that at the time, because there were still 3 1/2 months before I was supposed to come home from England, and my Mom didn't want me to come home early. There was a good support system in place and everything, but still, if I had known....I probably would have come home earlier.


  I got home in July of 2018, and it all became....real. I went back to work at McDonald's, where I still work, and in September my Mom and I moved into our own apartment. I had no idea what I was doing. Watching my Mom battle cancer....it was probably the hardest thing that I have ever done in my life. It seemed that every time she had an appointment with her oncologist, the cancer had disappeared from one place, but shown up someplace else....it was in so many places....at the end I kind of stopped keeping track of all the places it was. It was just too much. And at every appointment, her oncologist never made promises that she was going to go into remission, or be cured or anything. He always emphasized the fact that he was just trying to keep her alive as long as possible. It was a hard line to walk, because while I did always pray for a miracle that she would beat it, and she was so determined to beat it, she wouldn't even discuss things with me, such as what to do in the event of her death. I also knew that it was very likely that she wouldn't beat it, given the type of cancer and the nature of it, and I was always afraid of coming home after work or wherever I had been, and finding her dead. That's not how it ended up happening in the end, but I don't know how I would have handled it if that was how it happened.

  No matter how much I had prepared for the inevitable, though, when it came...I wasn't ready for it at all. My Mom was in a lot of pain at the end. She tried to hide it, she didn't want anyone to know, but she was. Her legs and feet were swelling, and fluid was coming out of her feet, and we had to change her bandages a lot. She wouldn't let us bring in home health or anything, so my Grandma and I were doing it mostly by ourselves. She had to use a walker to help her walk, and a wheelchair sometimes, and eating and drinking was difficult. Nothing tasted good to her. I had to help her with a lot of things, sometimes in the middle of the night, and while I didn't mind doing it, it was....just a lot sometimes. On Sunday August 4th I came home from work, it was early in the afternoon, and my Grandma had just changed my Mom's bandages and gotten her legs propped up and stuff. Grandma was going to a play later. A couple hours before I went to bed, I was trying to help my mom get comfortable in her chair, and she was really agitated, and she wanted to get up, but she couldn't pull herself up because she was too weak, and I couldn't help her get up. So we called my Grandma on her cell phone, and she left the play and came over to help. Grandma told me to call the ambulance, so I did, and they came, and took her to the hospital. My Grandma went with my Mom to the hospital, and I stayed home, because I had to work early the next morning. At about 11:00 that night, my Grandma called me. I had been sleeping, and Grandma told me that my Mom's kidneys were failing, and that they were going to take her to Kalispell, by helicopter. The helicopter left about midnight, I went to work at 6 the next morning, and my Grandma came into work at about 7 and was going over to Kalispell. 

  My sister and I got off work at the same time that day, so we went to my place, and called my Grandma, who said that we should come over to Kalispell, that the hospice director wanted to meet with us the next day, if possible. So a family friend of ours, Carol, drove my sister and I over to Kalispell, one of my uncles was already there, the other uncle was on his way, and my Aunt and one of my cousins were on their way. That was Monday. Tuesday morning the family members that were present met with the hospice doctor, Dr. Carlburg, who was wonderful, and the decision was made to put my Mom on hospice.

  The next few days are kind of a blur, filled out some paperwork, moved Mom to the hospice part of the hospital, a lot of visitors coming and going. The hardest part of all of that, though, was the waiting. I knew what was going to happen, I wanted my Mom to be out of pain, I didn't want her to suffer anymore, and just waiting for it to happen...was hard. Not knowing if it was going to be this moment. Or this hour. Or this day. It was hard. I ended up leaving and coming back home on Thursday, figured I should work before I had to take a significant amount of time off. My sister had come home earlier in the week, and some of our family friends were checking in on her. We had made arrangements, when my sister decided to go home, that if my Mom passed, we would call Carol first, and ask her to go be with my sister, while we told her the news. We didn't want her to be alone when that happened. I went home on Thursday, and nothing happened on Thursday night, so I went to work on Friday morning, and had told my Grandma to call me at work if anything happened, because I never have my cell phone on me at work. So of course every time the phone rang at work I was distracted. It was hard to keep it together that day.

  I went home after work, and puttered around for a few hours, and my sister and Carol had gone to dinner, then they stopped by my apartment, for a few minutes, and then left. A little while later, I was closing the curtains, getting ready to go to bed, since I had to be at work early the next day, and Carol's car was outside, and my sister and her were getting out of it. Carol was walking ahead of my sister, and I met her in the yard, and she said, "We were almost back to your Grandma's house, and I got a text from your Grandma that said, 'Go back to Jasmine's.'" And I knew. We called Grandma, and Mom had passed away about 10 minutes before. So I made arrangements for Jessica and I with work, and the rest is kind of a blur of funeral preparations and such.

  We asked a retired pastor, Pastor Les Nelson, to officiate at the funeral, because he knew Mom, and we wanted someone who knew Mom to do the funeral. That was important. Everything went pretty smoothly. I lived in the apartment that my Mom and I had lived in together for a few weeks by myself. If I could have afforded the rent by myself, I would have kept living there. It was hard though, I kept expecting her to walk through the door at any time. I still do. There have been other significant losses in my life over the past year as well, and it has been so hard. I also deal with depression, and other things, and right now it's winter, which is always hard, and the holiday season was hard, and my birthday.

It's been a little over 5 months since we lost my Mom, and I am learning how to navigate that, but sometimes it's hard. And that's okay. I'm trying to just be okay with how I happen to be feeling at any given moment. So there it is. Processing. Feelings are messy sometimes, but it is what it is.