When my father and mother were trying to get pregnant with me, my father and my aunts always tell the story of how my mother couldn't wait for grandchildren. She would say "I can't wait to be a grandmother" and my father would say "You're not even a mom yet, slow down!".
Being a grandmother was only one of the titles in life she was robbed of. She was physically a grandmother, but due to her disease she couldn't be the one she wanted to be and dreamed to be.
My mother's illness was a neurological disease that slowly, and painfully deteriorated her brain and her physical abilities. My father was her sole care-taker and lost everything emotionally & financially taking care of her, all while raising 3 children (basically by himself). He lost two homes, went into lower income housing and would always try to get the government to help, but at the time, they didn't offer any assistance financially for the caretaker. Now they do. He couldn't bring himself to put her in a nursing home until 5 years before she passed away. The reason he finally did, was because when he would take her for her much loved rides in the car to see the world and beauty around her, he would have to lift her to take her out of her wheelchair and put her in the car. Because of her illness, her body was always fidgeting and moving, he would constantly be fixing her so she wouldn't fall down or always had to have his extra senses working in case she fell out of bed, or just while trying to sit in a chair. He would feed her, dress her, bathe her and basically would do everything that later I would have to do with my own baby. He would cut up her food into tiny bites and get her cups with straws and try and hold the straw still so it didn't choke her with her jerking movements. He would brush her hair and sing to her.
She really wasn't able to communicate for those 5 years (although she did a little to my dad) and her body and mind were almost in a vegetable like state. I would hear her telling me something, or hear her moaning to me like she was trying to say something and maybe she was. I would bring Matthew down to see her and share his stage of development by at first singing lullabies that she sang to me, so could see me sharing that moment with my son, later it became Matthew singing to her of The Wheels on The Bus or whatever children's song we knew at the time.
When she would lie in bed, her head would automatically rest in a position facing the wall. So I covered the wall with pictures of my son 350 miles away. There were 11 x 14's, I love Grandma ones, etc. Every time she would look at that wall, he would be smiling at her. The aides at the nursing home would tell me sometimes they would walk into her room and she would be smiling looking at him.
I thought I had built myself to be strong. I definitely have had more than my years of hard times. My mother started the mental part of the disease when I was around 7. I am now 39. I missed my mother my whole life as she deteriorated even though she was physically there. There were and still are no "groups" for me. The motherless daughters groups over the last few years I looked into before she passed. They were all for daughters whose mom had passed or gave them up for adoption. I have been grieving most of my life for my mom without her being physically gone. When I was planning my wedding, going to Ireland, when I had my son times when most daughters need there mom, I didn't have her in the state that I needed her. Now that she is gone, I thought it would have been easier. Some people said why are you taking this so hard? You knew it was coming. Unless you have walked in my shoes, don't judge me on the grief process of my mother. There is no way to describe the pain I've felt.
My mother started with fluid in her lungs in November of 2005. My SIL in PA called me and told me I had basically a few hours to get 350 miles if I wanted to see her before she died. I made it in time and luckily for me, she held on a few more months.
In February 2006, we had to postpone Matthew's birthday party due to the weather and wound up having it the same weekend as Eric and my 11 year anniversary instead. His party was on Sunday. My friend "L" at the time lost her father - in -law and on the Monday night I was planning on going to the viewing. Monday morning I was coming down my hardwood stairs and I fell down all of them. Eric was home when it happened and made sure I could still take care of Matthew and then he went off to work. The pain in my leg was horrific that day. I couldn't go to the bathroom because stretching my skin around the area, was painful enough to bring tears to my eyes. I decided that unfortunately, I wasn't going to be able to drive myself to a viewing that night and eventually by the next day the pain in my leg would lessen. The bruise stayed for a month though. My whole upper part of my left leg was purple and black. The last time I had seen a bruise that big on me, was after having Matthew.
On that Tuesday I started to develop a cold in the nose and head and got a call from my father, saying that again my mom had fluid in her lungs and that again she was modeling (meaning no blood and her limbs were turning blue). I called Eric at work and told him he needed to come home and watch Matthew so that I could drive to PA. He immediately came home and I was at the nursing home by the evening. I'll never forget that fear of walking into that room. My whole life I was the one who in the Italian/Irish family, the oldest was always in charge of keeping us together or being the strong one, to hold up my dad and my brothers. How was I going to walk into that room and stay strong for my father? But I did, from somewhere deep inside my soul, and with God's help from holding me up...he carried me and held me up and gave me the strength I needed.
My cold was also getting worse as each day went by. I would wear those hospital masks in fear of making my mom worse. Not understanding the aides when they said that it didn't matter now. Not understanding when they started bringing in trays of food for us which they never did before. Thank God at the time, the nursing home she was in had the most loving, thoughtful, caring and wonderful staff although my father was always on top of them setting them straight and never taking his eyes off of my mother.
My brothers, my father and I were there for her for those last 3 days. I hadn't been able to sleep since I got there, so by Friday I thought I would be able to finally get some sleep. My mother spent the last day or so blue, with my brothers, my father and I just trying to keep her covered. We all sang, said our prayers and told her everything we ever wanted to say. My brother would try to get more drink in her (name in now gone of what it was). We wanted so much to ease her pain, her suffering, her lips were parched and there was nothing we could do. Our hearts were broken and we were pleading with God to finally take her at let her be at peace.
I swore I wasn't going to close my eyes until her last breath. My brothers and I said the rosary which I had not done since holy communion, but somehow it came back to me. I held my mom's hand all night and wasn't going to let go. Her hand that when I look at my own typing, is the same hand, the same skin, the same blood. My father and my brothers would occasionally take 5 minute naps between our grief, but I couldn't. I sat next to her and prayed and let her know that we forgive her for everything that was "due to her illness", that we always loved her, that we were sorry we couldn't have been there more for her, that I lived so far away etc. In hindsight, now I believe she held on those last 3 days because for the first time in at least 3 years, she had her 3 babies with her and there was no way she was going to let us go. She had every right too. At 4:45 am on February 25, 2007, her breaths were so rapid, so hard to watch her chest and her eyes so gazed. I looked up at my baby on the wall in his 11 x 14 picture and let go of her hand, because something within me was thinking of how I can't let Matthew go, how attached I am to my baby. I grabbed the picture and held him across my heart and closed my eyes. I fell asleep for what seemed like only a few seconds. I woke up to hearing my brother yell to get the nurse because her breathing was getting harder. The nurse came and as I am holding my father's arm, she said " She is taking her last breath".
Then at 4:55 am, she was calm and an immediate shaky smile came over me and I said Dad! She's Free! Did you see the movie City Of Angels? She is flying over our heads right now, out of this nursing home and for the first time in 5 years, she is going to see her mountains, she is going to have a party with her mom & dad, she is going to see the sunrise with us driving back to my father's about a half hour later, She is going to do it with the beauty that was robbed her so many years before. She is going to fly to my house and peek in the window at my son, she is going to see her other grandchildren and have health again! The whole world and such a wait just lifted off me in my heart.
Before we left the nursing home, I had the horrible task of going through her things that we later decided to donate to other patients. But I did grab one little stuffed dog, that back in January when I last brought Matthew in to visit her, he loved playing with. This dog is the spitting image of our dog Pooker Bear (see my photos in Flickr). This dog was my mom's caretaker before my father lost his house. We adopted him at the time and then he passed away when Matthew was 6 months old after 14 wonderful years. He never left my mom's side when she would walk up the avenue in the town they lived and forget to turn around. Anyone that went near her, he barked at to protect her. I wound up burying his ashes with her.
The day that she passed, I somehow remained strong and positive that a wonderful thing had just happened, while I helped my father and brothers plan our mom's viewing and mass and get through that. I wound up having my cold getting so bad that by the day of my mom's funeral on Tuesday Feb. 28th, I wound up getting a perforated eardrum and going to the hospital and then having to have my father drive me back to MA due to the Demerol they gave me for the pain. My own father on the day he buried my mom, had to go to the emergency room with me just hours after the dinner we had at a restaurant. It broke my heart that this was happening. I thought I was going to send him over the edge, witnessing my pain, I thought he would have a heart attack from the stress of it all.
But somehow he survived, I survived, my brothers are all somehow surviving and we go on.... and just pray and love each other because life is short and that is why you have to love your neighbors and just be nice to people in general, be nice to strangers on the street, be nice to people in your life and always just live life to the best and be happy that your life is still yours to live and breathe and see God's world because if you look at it through the eyes of someone like my mom who had no choice in what happened to her, you would so not take each day for granted.
Lastly, I wanted to add my mom's mass card with the most beautiful picture and prayer that we could find that matched her to a tee.
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