My eight and a half hour trip went by very quickly thanks to the podcast S-Town (or Shittown), the story of a murder that never happened and a death that did in Bibb County, Alabama in the town of Woodstock. I didn't quite finish the podcast's next to the last chapter and I have the last chapter still to go. The podcast's home page is here.
2. When I wasn't listening to S-Town, I reflected on the the past several weeks in Kellogg. I arrived in Kellogg on June 17th to help out with Mom. I thought a lot about the day I arrived in Kellogg. Christy and I went to the nursing home and I remembered thinking how small Mom's space was in the four person room she lived in, but it was quiet right then and very clean. Mom and I hugged and Christy and I talked for a bit before Mom asked us to leave because she wanted to be alone and rest.
On June 17th, Mom felt frail in my arms as I hugged her. She was much weaker than when I had seen her two months earlier. I just looked back at my blog entry for June 17th and now I remember that she was seeing things -- tubes overhead, an envelope at the end of the bed. On June 17th, Mom was still using her walker to get to the bathroom, but on that day she was too weak to walk the short distance back to her bed and sat on her walker and wheeled herself back, with Carol's help.
It goes without saying that we had no idea on June 17th how long Mom would live. I thought a lot today about how Christy and Carol and I had a bite to eat that afternoon at Radio Brewing and talked about Mom's finances. Carol had estimated that Mom had enough money for living at Kindred for the next year and on that day, for all we knew, Mom would be there another year.
On June 17th, Christy, Carol, and I were already concerned about how we would keep Mom company in September because I would be returning to Maryland in late August and Carol would be returning to full days of work and Christy would continue working part time. We brainstormed a bit about this, but I, for one, felt pretty stuck.
I thought a lot today about how Mom passed away two months later, on August 16th. I thought about her July 13th appointment with Dr. McDonald. That was the day the doctor recommended we bring hospice on board to help Mom out. Even then, a month before Mom died, not having a crystal ball, we were talking about what would happen monthly with hospice and what would happen after six months, and beyond. That day, Mom couldn't stay awake in her wheelchair in the examination room and couldn't really answer Dr. McDonald's questions about how she was doing. She did raise some good questions about her loss of appetite and the infrequent movement of her bowels and she seemed to have a pretty good understanding of and a strong approval of hospice entering her world. Christy and I both noted, though, that not having seen Mom since mid-May, Dr. McDonald seemed rattled by Mom's condition on July 13th.
From that point forward, time seemed to collapse on Mom. I thought a lot today about the incremental deterioration of her condition -- increased sleep, loss of appetite, more hallucinations, rarer and rarer moments of clarity, but her bursts of energy between July 30 and August 1 when she and Carol sang hymns outside together and when Judy and Angie visited. Then came the eventual loss of her voice, and, by about August 10th, almost all she did was sleep.
I don't know if in my entire life I've ever experienced such an intense two month period of time. It helps a lot to have written a daily record of all that occurred and it was good for me, today, while flying across the United States, to piece things together and realize how very little I could know when I arrived in Kellogg on June 17th and how very grateful I am for how frank the medical people were with us about her condition as Mom's life neared its end. No one tip-toed around the facts of her decline. No one gave us false hope.
3. The Deke picked me up at Baltimore Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport shortly after 6:00. We drove straight to Old Line and I loved drinking a couple pints of Bell's Two Hearted Ale, one of my favorite of all beers. We relaxed at the bar and returned to our apartment home where the Deke cooked salmon on the stove top and served it with a delicious quinoa salad and avocado slices. We split a 12 oz. bottle of Heavy Seas Loose Cannon IPA and, I have to admit, I started feeling a little sadness at the prospect of leaving behind these East Coast beers I've loved drinking over the last three years. I'll get over it . . . .
*Here's a picture Carol took on July 30th, the evening she and Mom sang hymns while on the patio at Kindred, the same evening Mom had propelled herself in her wheelchair up and down the nursing home hallways with her feet:
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| Mom and Carol on July 30, 2017 |
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