The giftof a day

We put Mom on a new pain relief system last night since she was having trouble swallowing pills. At 9 p.m., I pressed a Fentinyl patch onto the skin of her waist and held it tight to make sure it would stick. It's a 50 milligram patch--very strong--and I'd been advised to watch her closely for the first night, to be sure her breathing didn't slow to dangerously spaced intervals. I stayed up until 1, then went to bed. The patch had put Mom into a deep, relaxed sleep, and her breathing rhythm was regular and normal. I expected she'd sleep through the night and awaken in the hallucinotic stupor in which she'd spent most of the last week.

This morning at 4, I awoke to a sound from the baby monitor; my mom, coughing rough and deep from her chest. I got up and padded to her room, opened the door and peeked in. She was awake, and recognized me. I asked how she was doing. "I'm fine," she said. "How are you? Did I cough too much?" I assured her she hadn't, that I was just coming to make sure she was comfortable. She fidgeted with the blankets and stared, glassy-eyed, across the room, trying to move her legs. "I have to go to the doctor. But I have to go to the bathroom first. Hurry; we're late." I moved to help her up, but she resisted. "Honey, you're in my way. I can't fool around--I have a doctor's appointment." I decided to enter her world. "Which one, Mom? Dr. Gillon? Dr. Sweeney?" "Gillon," she answered. "Ahhhh," I said, then paused. "I checked the calendar. Your appointment isn't until tomorrow." She stopped trying so hard to move me out of the way. "Oh. Well, I still have to pee," she insisted. I groaned inwardly, desperate to dive back into sleep. The next half hour was taken up with the bathroom shenanigans I described in a previous post. Once I had her back to bed, and in fresh clothing, I turned to pick up some fallen kleenex beside Mom's bed.

"What's wrong with me?" She asked. I walked the tissue over to her wastebasket. "Oh Mom, you've been so sick," I said, thinking a short answer best since she wasn't her reasonable self. "I know," she said, "But what's wrong with me?" Something in her tone stopped me. It was clear, assured. Familiar. I turned around and saw that my mother had come back. I went and sat beside her and took her hand. "Oh Mom. Remember, you have cancer. That's why you've been so weak and so tired."

Understanding swept over her, and she began to weep. I've never seen my mother openly cry. Now and again while I was growing up, she'd hold her hand over her eyes momentarily, or I'd see a tear track down her cheek. But sobbing? Never. And never about her illness either. No matter how grave it got, she always had a feeling she'd beat it. But this morning at 4:30 a.m., she heard again and with open ears what her oncologist had told her. She knew and she accepted and she sobbed, mourning for her life. I cried along with her, rocking her in my arms. I told her I was sorry it was so hard, but that we were there for her. That we'd miss her terribly, but that we'd be OK, and that she would be OK, too. "Oh honey, I love you so much," she said, sagging against my side. We sat this way for a while, until she began to tremble from the effort of sitting up. I helped her lie back against her pillows. "It looks like you're getting sleepy, Mom." Fresh tears: "I don't want to go to sleep." I realized what she meant. "Mom, you have a little while yet to go. If you go to sleep now, it will be just sleep. You'll be OK. Do you want me to lay beside you?" I saw her relax as she said that would be nice. So I went back to my room and got my blankets, spread them on the bed beside her, then crawled in and lay on my side with my arm over her, daubing her tears with a kleenex. She told me she was thinking about her life, that she was trying to remember which was the last painting she'd made. My mom's paintings hang in homes all over Santa Barbara County. Neither of us could remember which was the last one she'd painted.

I've often thought that it's a good thing that we never know while we're doing something that it's the last time we'll ever do it. We never know if it's the last jog, the last trip to our favorite Vietnamese takeout place, the last kiss we'll ever share with our mate. And that's a blessing. The last time I walked with my mother outside, we just enjoyed the sunshine and the people we stopped and talked with. We lived so fully in each moment of that beachside outting. If we'd known it would be our last, the time would have been marred by the pall. Whatever that last painting was, my mother lived in the flow of each brush stroke.

As I lay there with my mother, both of us trying to keep our eyes open, I wondered if when I woke up in the morning she'd be back to being a zombie woman. But at 7:30, she woke up and the veil was still aside: There lay my mom, lucid again, and in no pain. My brother arrived and was beside himself with joy. "Mom! You're back!" She chuckled. "How long was I gone?" We filled her in. She asked how long she has to live, whether we'd talked about her memorial. She agreed with everything we'd thought up (which wasn't much to that point). She asked for and received a hot mug of coffee with milk. "Are you still seeing Dad?" My brother asked. "No, not out of the corner of my eye like I was before," she said. "I did see him while I was gone, though. And he was angry that I wasn't where he wanted me to be. He said it was taking a lot longer than he thought it would." We shared a wry round of laughter over that one. It was time for me to go. I'd packed the night before, while Mom was still in her zombie state. Now, with her in our world again, it tore my heart to leave. A week seems like forever if you're not sure your loved one will be lucid when you return. But my brother and sister need their time with her, too, and I need some time to regenerate. And so I left. During the five-hour drive home, my brother called twice to tell me Mom was still her old self. As for me, I called our Hospice RN. He said that it looked like her hallucinations and stupor were caused more by sensitivity to the oxycontin than by the cancer invading her brain, and that now that we've banished oxy from her med list in favor of fentinyl, there's a good chance my mom will remain clear-headed. I won't cling to that hope, though it's tempting. I'm learning to greet each day free of expectation, then negotiate each pitfall or savor each gift in its time.