Still here

I wasn't going to write again until my mom was gone. But I've had some hard days and writing seems to be one thing that ties me to the world still. She is wavering. I've been spending all my time with her, gladly, and seeing those little mommisms from time to time. A smile or the way she raises her eyebrows up or her mouth in a perfect little "oh" like she used to do a decade ago. So, I've been holding on to those. Yesterday, though, it was obvious that she's suffering. I wanted the "go to sleep and never wake up" kind of passing for her. Hospice thought she needed to be on heavy meds to be able to relax into the going and I'm the one that needed to okay that. So when I was up there yesterday, I saw the last of her mom mannerisms. I had to choose not to see those things again. Because the only real thing I wanted then was for her to not feel pain. It was really hard. But now she is sleeping, under, relaxing, and I know it was the right decision. It is a weird thing though because I keep having these irrational thoughts. I have a rational, detached mind that mulls over when do I go to the mortuary, and then I have this irrational, emotional side that thinks things like, if I had just fed her better two months ago she'd be fine. I know what the truths are; it's just difficult to believe them when the letting go is so darn sad for me.

One of the hospice caregivers gave me this little book called "Gone from my Sight". There was this one passage in it that was really good. In an earlier post, I talked about how I told my mom that I thought it was going to be like getting on a boat, with me here and dad at the other end. And then someone hands me this little book. Here is the passage from that book....

I am standing upon the seashore. A ship spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength. I stand and watch her until, at length, she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other.
Then someone at my side says, "There, she is gone!"
"Gone Where?"
Gone from my sight. That is all. She is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and she is just as able to bear her load of living freight to her destined port. Her diminished size is in me, not her. And at that moment when someone at my side says, "There, she is gone!" there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout; "Here she comes!" And that is dying.
--Henry Van Dyke