So I Guess I’m an Orphan.

***(Trigger warning: This post contains details and photos relating to parent illness/death.)

So… I’m back.  

Sorry about that.  

Well, actually I’m not sorry, because I was in full-on survival mode and no one should have to apologize for taking time to deal with life.  I’ve had to deal with a lot of life over the years, but the past few months have been full of so many changes it’s difficult to wrap my head around all of them.  

But here goes.  Part One:  MOM

My mom died April 4th.  I’ve mentioned her struggle with pancreatic cancer before on my blog and in YouTube videos, but the last month of her life was ROUGH.  She tried surgery at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore to remove her tumor in January, and while the surgery itself went well, she was too weak to really recover.  She stayed in that hospital for over two months, so I was driving back and forth an hour and a half each way to visit with her.  

Seeing your parent like this is NOT enjoyable.

Eventually they told us she couldn’t stay there any more and would have to go to an assisted living facility.  We struggled to find one close to us that would take her, because she was still using a feeding tube and couldn’t really move by herself.  Eventually we found one, but she was only there for a few days and she repeatedly called my brother, my aunt, and I crying because she didn’t want to be there.  

So, she ended up going to our local hospital.  After two weeks there, and countless meetings with doctors, nurses, social workers, etc. we made the decision to send her to hospice.  

It was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever been through.  The whole time she was in the local hospital she kept saying she wanted to “do the work” to rehabilitate herself enough to go home or back to a nursing facility, but she wouldn’t actually DO anything.  When we seriously asked her what she wanted us to do and where she wanted to go for her care, she said she wanted to go fishing.  

My mom in her happy place. On a boat with a fish.

Seriously. She couldn’t move and had a million tubes coming out of her body, but she said she wanted to go fishing.

Eventually it got to the point where she had to leave the hospital.  I mean, unlike what she hoped, you can’t just LIVE in a hospital.  She couldn’t live at home, she was still on a feeding tube, she couldn’t move and was getting weaker and weaker by the day.

She entered hospice in a relatively coherent state.  She knew what was happening.  She was terrified.  She didn’t want to die.  Hospice doesn’t allow tube feedings – it’s “comfort measures only.”  She knew that she was basically going to starve to death.  In a word, it sucked.  I had binged videos by Hospice Nurse Julie on YouTube, so I knew what to expect, but it still sucked watching it happen to someone I loved.

She made it over a week without any food or water, but after two days, it was no longer my mother in that bed.  It was a hollow shell.  She couldn’t speak, she wasn’t coherent – she basically fell asleep and just wasted away.

On the evening of April 3rd, the nurses called us and told us that it wouldn’t be long, so my brothers and I took off work and sat with her.  We were there for hours, saying our goodbyes, talking, reminiscing, and even laughing. 

Lunchtime on the 4th came and went, and we were all starving, so my brother decided to order a pizza.  The pizza came, and we dug in, and before I took a bite I walked over to check my mom’s breathing, which had been ragged and irregular all morning.  Pizza in one hand, I leaned over and watched her mouth … then her chest.  Nothing happened.  

From the time it took me to walk to the pizza box and back to her bedside, she left the world. 

Watching someone you love die from a disease is a whole different kind of grief than the kind I experienced with Libby, or my dad, stepmom, and sister.  They were all sudden and unexpected.  

My mom’s death was a surreal mix of sadness, relief, guilt, and the sinking realization that I no longer had any parents.  My family, as I knew it, was gone.  It was heavy.

My brother and I are co-executors of her will, which brings a whole host of responsibility and work that is still continuing.  We’ve had to remove everything from her house, get things fixed up, and put it up for sale.  When a child dies, there is paperwork.  But when an adult dies – there is SO MUCH MORE paperwork.  Wills, estates, taxes, attorneys, realtors, banks … The adulting never seems to end.  But unlike my dad and stepmom, my mom DID have a will and had everything pretty much organized for us, which makes things a lot easier. Thank you, Mom!

So, there you go, Interwebs.  Reason number one for my hiatus?  My mom died.  But the fun doesn’t end there.  I’ll be back again to explain. Stay tuned. ❤️