Mom, You've Really Been Gone a Month Now?

I am having an awfully hard time with the loss of my mother. Today it has been a month, and the realistic measure of that time has no meaning for me. My 2 brothers and 3 sisters aren't doing much better dealing with the loss either. Let's face it ~ there is no one else in the world quite like your mother. My sister asked me this week if I thought it was going to be this hard when we lose our Dad. I told her, uh ... probably as bad, if not worse, because that will be our last parent. And really, who isn't a Daddy's girl? Ugh, life just sucks sometimes.

This past week I spent with my Dad in Atlanta. His doctors were concerned about his health, fearing pulmonary hypertension (don't Google stuff like this if you don't want to be scared to death), and fluid retention turning into congestive heart failure. He had doctor appointments and tests scheduled for every day but one. While I was there, he came down with a bronchial infection ~ not good when you have COPD to begin with. So it was fortunate I was there to help him get through a busy and taxing week. Come Friday, the last appointment with the cardiologist bore good news. Test results did not support a diagnosis of pulmonary hypertension. Yay!

Dad, with his deeply rooted faith, seems to be coping with the loss of his life's partner of 58 years very pragmatically. The decline of her health was slow and steady for the 4 1/2 months leading up to her passing on October 17th. While we, her children, supported her every step of the way and expected to bring her home from the hospital on 3 or 4 occasions, and help nurse her back to health, that was not to be. I am struggling to focus on the happy memories instead of those of the last few months spent fighting, I felt, just as hard as she was to stay with us. Close to the end, after enduring numerous diagnostic tests, the unconfirmed diagnosis was pancreatic cancer, and, 6 days before the end, the prognosis was "it won't be much longer." At that point, as was her desire, she was released from the hospital to go home under hospice care. I still would not believe. Denial. I started reading the Hospice booklet. Realization started creeping in. It is so terribly hard to let go. Now she is no longer in pain.

Objectively, she was 86 years old and had enjoyed a full, beautiful life, surrounded by loving and devoted family: her husband, 6 children, 13 grandchildren, and 2 great grandchildren. To us she was THE best mother in the whole wide world. We will miss her smile.

Please pray for me. She doesn't need it ~ she is an angel now.

Till next time,

Apple Pickin' Time

It is such a blessing to have happy childhood memories. You don't realize, until you go out in the big wide world and interact with people from all walks of life, that not everyone is so fortunate to have had this.

With the recent loss of my dear mother, our big family rallied round. My father's sisters from New York state were able to come and be with him in Atlanta, due to the generosity of one of their sons, who paid for the airline tickets, and my brother, who paid for their hotel stay for almost a week. What a blessing that my Dad was able to have his sisters with him to help get through the initial bereavement process of wake, funeral service and interment to the final resting place.

This intense family time stirred up such fond memories of our family traveling each Fall for several years in a row for a tradition of apple picking in Comstock, NY, to the home of my Dad's eldest sister. We had 6 kids and they had 10 or 11, so imagine the mayhem! To this day I have a strong preference for the apple variety we picked back then ~ McIntosh. Til next time,