Parents are kind of important. They bring us into this world, they are the first to teach us everything. They answer our questions. They raise, help and support us. So when you learn that you're about to loose, or have already lost a parent, your world kind of comes crashing down around your head and there's nothing you can do about it. The closer you are/were to that parent, the harder that crash is. Wait... Let me back up a bit...
Back in 2009, I had just returned from a tour of duty in Iraq. I visited my mother in Denver CO. She was looking just fine, I thought. She was active, she had friends, she volunteered as a nurse at the Denver Hospice. Some months after that visit, she was suddenly diagnosed with kidney failure. That's not fatal in this day and age. She's been to the local dialysis center 3x a week ever since. Last year, she visited Washington and spent the week at my sister's place. I saw her for the first time since 2009. She was looking quite thin, almost gaunt. Honestly, I was a little bit scared. Multiple times during this year, she was hospitalized for various reasons. July 14th, my sister called and informed me that Mom was in the hospital for the 3rd or 4th time since June 1st. She asked me and asked me if I was still unemployed and available to fly to Denver to take care of my sick mother. I said that I could as long as I didn't have to pay the airfare. I flew to Denver International on the 16th and visited my mother that afternoon.
Mom was well enough to go home on the 20th, so, home we went. On Aug 1st, my sister, Jen flew into Denver on business. While she was in town, we received confirmation of pancreatic cancer. All three of us got into the car to take Jen to her conference in Colorado Springs and all seemed well enough. By Sunday evening, she was again sick enough that the decision was made to take her to the ER. Off we went. On Friday the 15th, she was well enough to be discharged to an inpatient rehab facility where she would recover strength lost due to the preceding extended stay in the hospital. On Monday, she had another episode that sent me looking for one of the staff RN's. Back to the ER and another hospital stay. This afternoon, I was involved in a conference call with the palliative care team and my 2 medically trained sisters. I had difficulty holding myself together as we discussed what we knew to be the final months of my mother's fairly long and eventful life. We discussed end of life care and decisions. One of the plans involved moving her to Washington to live with my sister, Jen. The mention of stuffing all of her stuff into the back of a U-Haul resulted in me mentioning that that one job would be rather emotionally taxing for me. It was at that point that I fell apart and cried for several minutes. 6 hours later, I'm still having episodes of tears. It's hard to say if it's harder now or if it will be harder later. She's still with us for a while, but the tears are going to return in a few months when the cancer finally claims her. I'm going to need a physical shoulder to cry on at some point. :(
Excuse me. I need to find a towel so I can wipe these tears off my keyboard.