My Mother at the End of Life: Waiting for Death

This post was written in November when my mother was nearing the end of life.

Death comes in its own time and I am not good at waiting.

I've realized I can only sit by a bedside for so long before I must be up doing something. Like my mother, who is at the end-of-life, I am a doer. I've had lots of people staying in my house and there is so much to do — laundry, cooking, dishes, fielding calls, making lists and more.

It's good I have a big house as all three bedrooms are taken and then we have more beds set up in the basement rec room. I bought this house with the idea that I'd have a lot of company, and that certainly has come to pass.

Today, our cousin brought her lovely black lab, Belle, to spend time with us. Belle made everyone laugh with her energy and antics. Fencing in the sides of my yard, so I can get my own dog, is a priority for the coming year. I'm a pet person and I've been without one for much too long.

Planning for the new year ahead reminds me that my mom won't be here in 2014. It feels funny to be thinking ahead, while she is in her final days.

Early this morning, about 3 am, I was sitting with my mom when she was having a terrible, agitated period — throwing up her hands and gasping for every breath over-and-over. So awful.

We are waiting for death.

It is certainly not a Hallmark card. Nor is it a Lifetime movie where Mummy has great lighting and takes her last breath on queue. Instead, my mom's departure from this world is more of a ragged, lurching, protracted crawling toward death.

Watching her demise makes me think of my own death, which I don't really want to contemplate. But I can't help going there in my head. I wonder under what circumstances I will leave this world and if it will be a fast or slow, easy or prolonged leaving.

My hope is that we will have more options on deciding our own fates by the time I die.

I am planning dinner for tomorrow night when we will be a party of five or six, not counting my mother. She will either be gone or she will be breathing with effort down the hall in my master suite.