It’s 3 a.m. She’s up. Wants us both with her. Wants to sit at the table and talk and eat. I think she thinks she’s going to die before morning. The cat is sleeping somewhere, hidden, in her room.
So we sit with her, at the kitchen table, and listen as she talks, non-stop, in a voice so weak that we can hardly hear. She wants me to have her hats and some suit that she seems to be fond of. She talks of the past, of people in her past. She cries a little. Thanks us. Says we are angels; knows we’re her kids making up for all the rotten things we’ve done over the years. We give her a Tylenol. She takes nothing stronger than that for pain.
In an hour, she’s ready to go to sleep again. I know that she will be up, every hour on the hour, to go to the bathroom, and we will have to help her. Yawn. So much for a good night’s sleep.
When she wakes close to noon, she seems surprised to find that she’s still alive. She is weak. Unsteady on her feet. She gets up and sits in her recliner for a while, eats some eggs, and goes back to sleep.
I get on the phone to find out how we might be able to get medical help at home. Other kind of help is easier to get, but it’s the medical support that we really need. She doesn’t want to have to go back to a hospital, and we don’t want her to either. We’ll take advantage of the caregiving help, too.
I finally find someone who can explain the process. But, of course, it’s the holidays, so I can’t get to anyone in charge until Tuesday. She has a neurologist appointment on Tuesday, and I have no idea how we will get her dressed and out of the house and into a car.
My cat, Calli, keeps trying to sleep next to my mom, but she doesn’t want my chubby feline on her bed. Calli eats a little, follows me around, keeps trying to sneak into my mother’s bedroom.
I read. I knit. I sit and blog while my brother sits with her. Tomorrow is New Year’s Eve.
This is the way the year ends; this is the way the year ends. This is the way the year ends — not with a bang, but a whimper.