My Aunt L. finally faced up to the decision that my uncle is too weak and too debilitated for radiation and chemo. She asked him late last week in one of his more lucid periods, and even with several brain tumors (and there are several) his lucid periods are a lot more lucid than the best of most of us without a brain tumor, to think about radiation and what he wanted. He said he wanted to go home. It also doesn’t help that Monday’s MRI shows that one of the small “lesions” in the back has gotten significantly bigger since they went in and did the biopsy on the big one.
My mother and her sister, Aunt M.T., have been down there since Sunday and will be home tomorrow. It pains me that I couldn’t help my aunt get to this place, that I couldn’t help him get home. Aunt M.T. says that Aunt L. really needed to hear from his sisters that it was OK to skip the radiation, that the path we followed with my grandmother wasn’t necessarily the right path for him. That makes sense, I suppose, after all I am just a kid, right?
So he is home now, set up in the rented hospital bed with the oxygen tank and looked after by hospice care workers and my Aunt L. It seems selfish to sit here and wait when I could be down there (TGF would probably understand if I skipped out after Christmas but she wouldn’t like it much), but I’m not entirely sure I have the strength to be there.
And what would I do anyway but be in the way? If he doesn’t know I love him by now then telling him in the last few weeks of his life isn’t going to do much good. My mother is convinced he won’t see the new year, and my mother is the ultimate pragmatist.
No matter when it happens, at least he is at home now where he wanted to be all along.
I will spare you any of the trite canned sentiments people reserve for times like this….being that I don’t pray, my best positive and peaceful thoughts to yourself and your family.
I was devistated when I walked into ICU to see my mother on the Monday she died – she had the going home stare, 1000 miles away. I had not gone in on Sunday because dad and my sister said don’t worry and my front door lock had decided to break and I needed to get it fixed.
I don’t know if my mother even knew I was there. I had dreaded this moment, I didn’t want to have to talk to her to say goodbye but when there wasn’t the option I found I wanted it very badly.
Before I left that evening I told her I loved her and she said I love you too, more than she had said all day to me. I hold on that she knew who I was and that that was enough.
I wanted to be there when she died but dad told us to go home, and he called when it was eminent but we missed it. He had asked her if she wanted to go and he said she said yes, but she thought he was a doctor.
Dad said he was glad we had not been there because despite what they had discussed when she went into cardiac arrest he did ask them to try. They brought her back, the 2nd time he said let her go and he was glad we didn’t have to see that.
My dad is full of guilt because of all the things he had wanted to say to Mom but this caught him by surprise.
Dad had a stroke Nov 10th, 20 days before we were going to head down to Disney World to get away from being depressed at home with the first Christmas without Mom.
Dad could speak but it was all nonsense. For the first week or so he was in a panic because he could not say the things he wanted to say.
Now we are spending lots of time working on getting communication back. We spend lots of time saying I love you.
Sure my mom knew it and my dad knows it, but I still never did say it enough.
Do what you feel is right for you, what you can live with and as my dad says all the time now, do what you can.
He knows.
Your aunt will need attention once he departs.
Peace be with you Woodstock!
STB
My thoughts are with you.