Mother's Day Thoughts
It's Mother's Day. My kids gave me their poems, bookmarks, drawings and handprints they made at school as soon as I got up (they actually let me sleep in). Soon we'll be headed out for some brunch. Then it's over to my mother's room in a skilled nursing facility - called SNF (pronounced "sniff") for short. They have a cat there named "Mr. SNF" and my kids play with him while they wait for me to take care of their grandma.
This may be my mom's last Mother's Day. She's back on hospice care. I say, "back" because I had to take her off of it so that when she fell and broke her leg three weeks ago. That way it could be surgically repaired so that her insurance would pay for most of the hospital stay and surgery. You can't be "fixed" when you have something broken and still be on hospice care at the same time - the ins and outs of the last chapter of life for some.
At this point, there are many things on the table that never were: mortuary arrangements, dispersing of most of my mom's belongings from her assisted living unit room, middle stage Alzheimer's, and wearing a bib to eat. It's all so undignified at times, though I try my best to surround her with a semblance of decorum.
Sex is not on the table for her, though it's clear to me that she loves to be touched still. She is pleasantly affectionate with the CNAs who help her, holding their hands and stroking their forearms when they assist her. For the last five years, I've sent the same massage therapist into my mom's room each week. They've developed a wonderful friendship that comes with spending such regular time together. With each massage come flowers picked fresh from her garden - even when her own son, barely an adult, died last year.
At this point, it's about physical comfort for my mom coupled with the avoidance of pain. Later on, we'll go to my mother-in-law's three-month old grave. My youngest wants to put flowers there. He likes to raise his water glass and offer a toast of "nostrovia" to his living grandma, his dead grandma, and to the uncle who died last week. Close friends had to put their dog down two weeks ago and left their son with us while they transported their dog to vet. My kids created sympathy cards for their friend and then each gave him one of their stuffed dogs to help him with his sad feelings.
Yep, 2008 has been filled with aspects of death and dying. We keep reading books like When Dinosaurs Die and I Miss You to help the kids (and ourselves) with all these endings.
And, ironically, today I've been thinking quite a bit about a comment one of my clients made recently. He's in the computer and software business and was attending a seminar about accessibility - how to make their computer technology work for people with all sorts of abilities and disabilities. One of the presenters at the seminar who was disabled in some way said that while it was true that he had a disability, the rest of the room was only "temporarily enabled." Today, I'm keenly aware of that fact.
Related Topics: Technorati Tags: hospice, Mothers Day, death and dying, touch
This may be my mom's last Mother's Day. She's back on hospice care. I say, "back" because I had to take her off of it so that when she fell and broke her leg three weeks ago. That way it could be surgically repaired so that her insurance would pay for most of the hospital stay and surgery. You can't be "fixed" when you have something broken and still be on hospice care at the same time - the ins and outs of the last chapter of life for some.
At this point, there are many things on the table that never were: mortuary arrangements, dispersing of most of my mom's belongings from her assisted living unit room, middle stage Alzheimer's, and wearing a bib to eat. It's all so undignified at times, though I try my best to surround her with a semblance of decorum.
Sex is not on the table for her, though it's clear to me that she loves to be touched still. She is pleasantly affectionate with the CNAs who help her, holding their hands and stroking their forearms when they assist her. For the last five years, I've sent the same massage therapist into my mom's room each week. They've developed a wonderful friendship that comes with spending such regular time together. With each massage come flowers picked fresh from her garden - even when her own son, barely an adult, died last year.
At this point, it's about physical comfort for my mom coupled with the avoidance of pain. Later on, we'll go to my mother-in-law's three-month old grave. My youngest wants to put flowers there. He likes to raise his water glass and offer a toast of "nostrovia" to his living grandma, his dead grandma, and to the uncle who died last week. Close friends had to put their dog down two weeks ago and left their son with us while they transported their dog to vet. My kids created sympathy cards for their friend and then each gave him one of their stuffed dogs to help him with his sad feelings.
Yep, 2008 has been filled with aspects of death and dying. We keep reading books like When Dinosaurs Die and I Miss You to help the kids (and ourselves) with all these endings.
And, ironically, today I've been thinking quite a bit about a comment one of my clients made recently. He's in the computer and software business and was attending a seminar about accessibility - how to make their computer technology work for people with all sorts of abilities and disabilities. One of the presenters at the seminar who was disabled in some way said that while it was true that he had a disability, the rest of the room was only "temporarily enabled." Today, I'm keenly aware of that fact.
Related Topics: Technorati Tags: hospice, Mothers Day, death and dying, touch
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