My parents 53rd anniversary is today, taking place at the funeral home.

hippywife

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Tue Nov-16-10 01:36 PM
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My parents 53rd anniversary is today, taking place at the funeral home.

Edited on Tue Nov-16-10 01:43 PM by hippywife

I was away all last week spending time with my mother until she passed away on Thursday. They did everything they could for her, more than she would have wanted, but before they could remove the ventilator and the tubes, she gave up the fight and went on her own with every one of us around her. She was never very conscious when I was there, only occasionally and then very slightly. They did everything they could to keep her as comfortable with all of that as possible.

She was only 70 years old.

She had an emotionally difficult life. Gang-raped by three teenage boys when she was just 13, after her parents divorced, she was drug around by an alcoholic mother and her men until she met and married my dad at age 17. She was told she would never be able to have children because of some ovarian cysts. I was born nine months and three days after their wedding, and my four sisters came in extremely quick succession. My brother was born six years after the last girl. After my brother was born, one day she called the doctor suffering from what we now know as postpartum depression. The doctor told her to get ahold of my dad to come home immediately. She locked herself in the bathroom until he got there so she wouldn't harm any of us.

When I was around 16, and she 32, she was diagnosed with uterine/cervical cancer. The treatment of the day was to implant cobalt directly into her uterus before the hysterectomy to prevent spreading the cancer. After she went through radiation therapy. Not long after, it came out that the hospital had over-radiated their patients during that period. At the time she wasn't suffering any ill effects, so they chose not to participate in a class action suit against the hospital. The worst was to come many years later. Because of the radiation, the inside of her body began growing scar tissue to the point that she couldn't risk surgeries unless they were absolutely necessary.

Before I married and moved away 13 years ago, she had a urostomy, then within the last few years a colostomy. She had a sore on her bottom from all the radiation, but it was closed for the most part and never troubled her all of those years. When she went for skill care at a facility a few years ago, they were all freaked out about it and that it would be held against them so they began "treating" it and in doing so re-opened it. It was never to close again. It continued to cause her pain and infections, including osteomyelitis. It was the beginning of her downturn. They did surgery to remove the infected bone and cover the affected area with a flap of skin, but the infections continued. She stopped eating or drinking anything except a few bites of something or another on occasion. She basically starved and dehydrated herself into critical condition, which landed her in the hospital this last time. No one from the home health agency ever seemed to noticed what was happening to her, they were solely focused on her wound. In continuing to treat that wound they gave her several strong infusions of an anti-biotic without monitoring through blood tests that are required. This lead to vestibular damage and she was never able to control her balance after that. She couldn't walk well because of that and took several falls until she was afraid to walk any longer.

When they removed all the apparatus at the hospital after she passed last week, she no longer looked like my mother at all. Could have been a total stranger lying there. In some small way, I think that helped. She was very swollen and there was nothing they were going to be able to do to change that at the funeral home.

I came home Saturday because I missed my own husband and I couldn't bear the long good-bye ahead. I no longer wished to see her earthly shell, so battered and abused by disease and treatment, and most of all, I didn't want to be there for the burial. It's always been the most difficult part of the process for me. I couldn't bear to be there when they do it tomorrow for her.

She was a really funny lady most of the time even though much of what she endured, until the last couple of years or so, when depression took hold and wouldn't let go. She was an excellent cook and that is how many people remember her. I never fully appreciated her until after I married myself and found that, even under the best of circumstances, it changes your entire life. I have no idea how she maintained through it all, where she found the strength to make it through everything. They don't come any tougher, or more willing to put aside herself for her family.

I do miss her even though we spent much of the last thirteen years apart which I think also tempers the loss to a bearable point. Staying would not have.

I talk to my dad and sisters every day, but if you have time and wouldn't mind sending them your kindness, keeping my father and my family in your thoughts today and tomorrow as they bear what I could not, I would appreciate it.