My Mother's Last Days - August 12, 2015

I hold my mom's hands. They are warm with blood still coursing through them. I watch for her heartbeat, it softly shows through her thin sweater. She has been alive in her body for 86 years and nearly three months. She has used her body for good: serving, loving, teaching, supporting. I imagine the time when my mother's heart will stop and her hands will grow cold. I'm afraid for that time. I can replay videos of her laughing, talking, vibrant with life. I can remember holding her in big hugs or kissing her on her forehead. But once she's gone I will not be able to touch her again. I can't capture that, as hard as I try.

Her smell will remain on her clothing, the fragrance "Beautiful" was hers and always will be. I'll buy a bottle to remember. I will look at photos and listen to sound bytes. I will taste the foods she loved - corn on the cob, fudge, rice pudding. I can smell, see, hear and taste things to remember her. But I won't have her to touch. It makes me sad. I will miss my mother's touch. I look forward to the day when I pass through the veil and find my mother with open arms, ready to give me the hug I'll want for the rest of my life.

My Mother's Last Days, August 9, 2015

I haven't written for a few weeks. I went to girls' camp and got out of the habit. My mom is in my thoughts every day though.

Yesterday I was at her house in Springville. Amy and Wolf were there and we were continuing the job of moving everything out of closets and rooms to one main area where we can sort and get things ready to sell. I washed a zillion pieces of glass. Amy stacked a zillion sweatshirts and sweaters into various piles. My mom liked things and yet she nurtured relationships. I know relationships trumps things, hands down, in my mom's book.

Wolf got tired and needed to be rocked. There isn't a rocking chair in the house so I went to the front porch and sat in my mom's blue rocking chair where I'd sat many times over the years. I rocked a baby boy and sang to him. As I gazed out over the yard and the big tree I began to cry. This little boy won't know his wonderful great-grandma. He won't get to run through the yard or climb the big tree we all climbed as kids. He won't get to run through the screen door, hearing it bang behind him like we did. My heart aches for the loss of my mother and she's still here. The house isn't the same without her and yet it holds so many memories and so much promise for the next family who will live there. I wish it could be us or one of our kids but it can't. We have to let it go. We have to let my mom go. We can hang on to memories and make new ones, different ones that don't involve a big tree or a blue rocker. It will be hard but Heavenly Father is helping every step of the way.

My Mother's Last Days - July 21, 2015

I won't be able to write for the next few days. I'm headed to girls' camp and technology is banned, happily by leaders, not so happily by the girls. I couldn't get a signal anyway - Camp Shalom is 10,000 feet and coverage is poor for cell companies. So it's easy to be obedient and I want to focus on my girls anyway.

My mother continues to decline. She moans incessantly and makes little sense when she speaks. She's talked of her parents being dead, of my dad dying, of a baby boy being born dead, of frogs, fire engines and how she'd be better off dead which is really the only sensible (in that it makes sense, not that I agree) thing she says besides "I love you." She gets agitated easily and the volume of her moaning rises if you try to adjust her head or feet or make other changes. I've heard her moans as I've stepped in the front door of the care center and mom's door was closed. Her room is quite far from the front door.

One aide gave her lorazepam and morphine on top of each other last weekend. It knocked my mom out and the aide achieved her goal - to have my mom be quiet. We complained and she was removed from med tech duty and banned from my mother's room. My mom continues to moan. There is a man who lives at the care center. He moves about in a motorized wheelchair. He eats his meals alone. I'm not sure of his ailment but he can speak slowly and be understood. One day this week he heard my mom moaning and he took a stuffed bear to her. I thanked him today for it. He slowly explained he heard her crying out a lot. He wanted to help.

Some people help by being tender and patient, holding her hand and telling her it will be alright. It sometimes soothes my mom but most often she remains agitated until she is given some authorized meds. I don't understand her moaning. I get frustrated and wonder why it doesn't bother her to listen to it go on and on. Does it help her to moan? Is it a comfort to her? The Latin meaning of dementia is "to depart one's mind." I know her mind is still there. She sometimes talks to us like she used to, even joking at very rare times. But what is it that descends over her mind to disconnect thoughts, blanket with a fog or trigger moaning? I hate dementia. It's one of the most unfair, awful, frustrating diseases humans have to endure. And I don't understand how and why my mom was targeted. We have longevity on both sides of the family - people who lived to be over 100 and they were coherent to the end. Why does my mom have to suffer this horrible end to her wonderful life? Perhaps we'll know when we move through the veil to the other side. I know she'll be happy to find out once she gets there. It will be sooner than later, of that I'm sure.