Continued Disbelief...

[Aus1412]

Hello everyone.  I lost my mother almost one month ago.  I wake up every morning like, "Did this really happen?"  The nights are worst because I want to call her so badly to share my day and just hear her voice.  When she was here, I couldn't wait for her to finally pick up the phone because since the day I was born, I loved and couldn't wait to hear her say "Hello".  Since the day I was born, I couldn't wait to walk into any home, place, or room she was in because just seeing my mother brought me joy.

I don't feel sorry for me.  I feel sorry for my mother.  When she was sick in the hospital, she said she did not want to die.  She lived a long and BEAUTIFUL life, but she was not ready to let go of it, and that pains and haunts me to no end.  She wanted to keep living and doing the things she loved and being around us.  She had her medical issues, so we thought they would be managed in the ICU and we would bring her home to love on her once again.  She never left the hospital to our shock.  Her absence from my life is very odd, silent, and sickly.  Yes, I say sickly because the sickness I feel in my body everyday from her being snatched from her life and mine feels sick and vile.  It feels insulting and cruel.  It feels abnormal and violating.  It is something noone wanted, including her, and it feels like some villian came into our lives, very uninvited, and won't leave.

I long for my mother.  I feel like she is somewhere and I need to go get her so we can continue our lives.  This person's presence that grounded me on this earth just vanished??!!!!!  That's it?  This is how it ends?  It feels so cruel.  My mom was too smart, on my gosh was she smart, to be just plucked from this earth.  She knew how to do anything and everything, and did it with such beauty and excellence.  She loved me and my sister fiercely and gave us everything, even things we did not need because she wanted us to have the BEST.  She always gave us the BEST and high quality of everything.  I continue to picture  my mom walking up to my door with her arms outstretched telling me this was all a bad dream and then asking, "You want to go to this new store I found?"   I now feel vulnerable, scared, and uncertain of everything.

I am not worthy of being my mom's legacy.  She was and did so much more than me.  She deserves to be here today....living her beautiful life.   Thank you for listening.

[justme500]

I lost my mom in June.  Everyone loved her.  She was an amazing woman who loved me with everything she has.  She would "adopt "random people throughout her life when they needed a mother because her love seemed limitless.  I am not like her but I try to be. I miss her so much every day the pain is indescribable to someone who has not  had the same kind of loss. I can tell you from how you described your mom she would argue that you are worthy of her legacy.  Remember how much she loved you and wanted you to have the best and try to do the best for yourself.   You are not alone.  

[Aus1412]

Hello Justme500,

Whomever comes across you comes across the kindest of persons.  Of all the things you could have done in this huge world, you reached out to this tortured soul.  May you receive bountiful blessings.

I am so very sorry about the  loss of your mother also.  It is very recent for you too.  Yes, the pain is indescribable.  It's so wonderful that your mother "adopted" others to help and love.  My mother was the exact same way.  I will live my best life for her.  I have now promised her that every day.

Thank you for your kindness.

 

 

 

[Matthew48]

I lost my mother 14 months ago.  She was in her early 70s. Some say she was too young, but we all know that you are not young in your 70s (most people, today, die between 70-80 years old).  No matter how sad the death has been, it became the most eye-opening experience I could have ever had.  I learned so much about life and about other people "I thought I knew." 

It hurts terribly when you love a parent you cherish, but always remember: death comes to everyone. Death might seem unfair, cruel, unnatural, etc., but ultimately, it's everyone's fate. I don't know if that can help you a little in your grief journey. Nothing -- and I mean nothing -- is permanent in life. Everything is changing all the time; it's simply that we're not attuned to this reality nearly as sharply as we should be. 

In all honestly, my mother died when she had her brain bleed, even though she lived almost two more years after the event. She made a tremendous physical recovery from the stroke over time, though she was never the same person again, despite retaining some aspects of her old personality. I forgot to mention that my mother had an autoimmune blood disease on top of the stroke that didn't cause her any physical pain. Nonethelesss, she had to get weekly blood/platelet transfusions. Her failed first treatment took place before her stroke, but we decided against a second treatment because her mental state was too weak for an extended hospital stay (The blood disease came about almost a year before she had her stroke.)

My father and I suffered greatly as 24/7 caretakers, especially in the second year post-stroke. My mother became more irrational--- didn't want to bathe, have her hair washed, nor did she have any interest in anything. She'd stay up all night, pacing between the kitchen and living room. She could go to the bathroom on her own, but she'd force my father to accompany her 75% of the time. I would try to sit with her at night, but I couldn't stay awake. She would get combative if you tried to get her to settle down and sleep. The doctors told us that she didn't have dementia -- it was just the effects of the stroke on top of her past mental history. Who knows? Interestingly, her memory was excellent, and many of her cognitive skills remained as sharp as ever. In the end, though, this mattered little, as she was horribly difficult to care for (so dependent on my father).

In closing, take good care of yourself. Feel what you need to feel, but give yourself breaks (distract yourself, etc.). Never run away from grief as it will come back to bite even harder in the future. Also, don't be hard on yourself -- you're going through a major loss. Your grief is YOUR grief -- not someone else's.  Learn to live day by day with no goal or timeline.  You will heal as time goes on. Things can get worse on the journey for  a while, just like things can get better (can change minute by minute, day by day). Grief is very unpredictable. For most, it takes several years to heal and to come to terms with what happened. And, even then, we'll never stop loving the person we lost in this life, but maybe we'll be able to think of our mothers with a smile and not a tear.

Peace and healing to you. 

 

[Aus1412]

Thank you Matthew48.  And for sharing your experience with your mother.  Her passing is also recent for you.  Thank you for putting more of realistic view on death.  Can I tell you all what really gets to my gut the most?  It starts here...  Me, mom and other family members were out for dinner.  My mom since the day we were born was the greatest cook, creative cook, and still cooked meals for me up until the day she died.  All of her food was made from love.  Back to the restaurant.  It was a Habachi restaurant.  So the chef was placing our respective portions on our plates.  For some reason, mom's portion was very small and I saw her place still being held out by her thinking she was going to get more.  The rest of us had a good amount, but hers was small.  Something about that go to me.  My mom, who had cooked for family, friends, and everyone was left with this little food, and I knew she wanted more.  I pretended that I was full and told her to take mine.  She refused saying she was just fine.  Something about my mother not having enough food did something to me.  From that day on, I cooked more meals for her and did more grocery shopping for her because the sight of her wanting more food that day just got to me.

Fast forward to the ICU, they could not give my  mom solid foods and each day we came to the hospital, she asked us if we had any food.  She had a small brain bleed so her thoughts were a little scrambled.  They doctors said she could only have ice cubes, and only  four very small cubes every few hours.  That broke my heart because she was asking for food.  One day when she was kind of out of it, she motioned me to her hospital bed.  She gathered her little hospital gown in the middle, and in the smallest and softest voice asked me to bring her some grapes and place them right her.  She pointed to her lap, as though she and I had a secret agreement to bring her some grapes.  I told her the best I could that she could not have any food right now because they did not want her to aspirate.  Her eyes looked so sad.  When my mother died, she died hungry.  When my mother died, she died hungry.  When m y mother died, she died hungry.  My head goes into a spin and my soul is tortured when I think of this.  In my mind, when she died, she was holding out her plate for more food at the restaurant tbat  she never got.  This wonderful little woman who feed us well up until the day she died, died hungry.  There I was, after the restaurant, making sure I cooked for her when I could (even though she did not need me to) because the thought of her being hungry floored me....................and she died hungry.   The thought of that each day stops me from functioning.

This whole death thing is like I have been thrown into a torture chamber.  Mom dies hungry, mom died in pain, mom may have been placed on a ventilator against her will, mom wanted to be cremated and we did, but the thought of what we did to her body through cremation seems so vile.  Mom told me in the hospital that she did not want to die, so she left this world unwillingly.  She was not ready to go.  She has lost her life and her children.   She died hungry.    If this is how it ends.....what does that say about this whole life thing??

Every morning when I wake her death slaps me in the face.  So I have to go through my work and and homelife like as if I'm ok, and I'm not.  For the first time in my life, I have thought about calling my doctor to give me drugs for my brain.  I only take prescribed medications that are needed, and I am not big on taking meds unless absolutely needed.  I think I need them but I am afraid of addiction.  I need something to cope with how my mother left this world and don't know if I will ever  get over what she had to deal with in that hospital.  In that hospital whose building I will never walk into again.

 

[Matthew48]

1 hour ago, Aus1412 said:

Thank you Matthew48.  And for sharing your experience with your mother.  Her passing is also recent for you.  Thank you for putting more of realistic view on death.  Can I tell you all what really gets to my gut the most?  It starts here...  Me, mom and other family members were out for dinner.  My mom since the day we were born was the greatest cook, creative cook, and still cooked meals for me up until the day she died.  All of her food was made from love.  Back to the restaurant.  It was a Habachi restaurant.  So the chef was placing our respective portions on our plates.  For some reason, mom's portion was very small and I saw her place still being held out by her thinking she was going to get more.  The rest of us had a good amount, but hers was small.  Something about that go to me.  My mom, who had cooked for family, friends, and everyone was left with this little food, and I knew she wanted more.  I pretended that I was full and told her to take mine.  She refused saying she was just fine.  Something about my mother not having enough food did something to me.  From that day on, I cooked more meals for her and did more grocery shopping for her because the sight of her wanting more food that day just got to me.

Fast forward to the ICU, they could not give my  mom solid foods and each day we came to the hospital, she asked us if we had any food.  She had a small brain bleed so her thoughts were a little scrambled.  They doctors said she could only have ice cubes, and only  four very small cubes every few hours.  That broke my heart because she was asking for food.  One day when she was kind of out of it, she motioned me to her hospital bed.  She gathered her little hospital gown in the middle, and in the smallest and softest voice asked me to bring her some grapes and place them right her.  She pointed to her lap, as though she and I had a secret agreement to bring her some grapes.  I told her the best I could that she could not have any food right now because they did not want her to aspirate.  Her eyes looked so sad.  When my mother died, she died hungry.  When my mother died, she died hungry.  When m y mother died, she died hungry.  My head goes into a spin and my soul is tortured when I think of this.  In my mind, when she died, she was holding out her plate for more food at the restaurant tbat  she never got.  This wonderful little woman who feed us well up until the day she died, died hungry.  There I was, after the restaurant, making sure I cooked for her when I could (even though she did not need me to) because the thought of her being hungry floored me....................and she died hungry.   The thought of that each day stops me from functioning.

This whole death thing is like I have been thrown into a torture chamber.  Mom dies hungry, mom died in pain, mom may have been placed on a ventilator against her will, mom wanted to be cremated and we did, but the thought of what we did to her body through cremation seems so vile.  Mom told me in the hospital that she did not want to die, so she left this world unwillingly.  She was not ready to go.  She has lost her life and her children.   She died hungry.    If this is how it ends.....what does that say about this whole life thing??

Every morning when I wake her death slaps me in the face.  So I have to go through my work and and homelife like as if I'm ok, and I'm not.  For the first time in my life, I have thought about calling my doctor to give me drugs for my brain.  I only take prescribed medications that are needed, and I am not big on taking meds unless absolutely needed.  I think I need them but I am afraid of addiction.  I need something to cope with how my mother left this world and don't know if I will ever  get over what she had to deal with in that hospital.  In that hospital whose building I will never walk into again.

 

I can relate fully to what you've been through, because I always believed I didn't do enough for my mother. I think that I could have taken her to more doctors, or that I should have gotten her more help for her mental afflications. But, I know deep down that nothing was going to give her her mind back 100% -- not even close. 

You obsess on you're mother being hungry, and that she died in an awful state. Again, I fully relate: my mother contracted sepsis a few days before she died. I could barely bring myself to go to the hospital before she got sepsis because of her mental state (most of the time she was completely out of touch with some lucidity here and there).  When I got the hospital late in the afternoon, I only stayed for 30 minutes or so. As soon as I walked in the room, I knew it was "game over." Even though she was still not on oxygen and was very alert, she had clammy skin and her eyes were bulging. She was hooked up to nothing, as I already said. She didn't talk, but she smiled at us and kept her hand held out to us. I placed my hand on her forehand, clearing knowing in my heart that the end was near. She kept smiling at me, although it was faint. Dad and I left at the same time, telling her good-bye with a wave. She smile dimly at us once again. The hospital called us an hour later and said that they were going to try dialysis as a last resort to see if it could bring the sepsis under control. Although the chances of success were slim, we agreed. I had zero hope, but Dad was still clinging to some. A nurse called about 90 minutes later to tell us that they had prepared her for dialysis, and that she was already intubated and stable, although still critically ill with sepsis.  Not even two hours later, I got a call that my mother had a massive brain bleed right before she was to get hooked up for dialysis, and that she was actively dying. She was technically brain dead, but they could keep her heart beating for a few hours with vasopressors. My Dad went to the hospital to say good-bye. He left before she was clinically dead. I couldn't bring myself to go; I had had enough. She was brain dead, so she wouldn't have known me anyways. My mother's sisters came to the hospital, making things worse for my father (making everything about them). It was a dreadful situation. I know that I had made the right decision by not going to see her one more time.

You see -- we get hung up on how things should have been and what we could have done better. But, in the end, it was what it was. There's no changing the past. We trick ourselves into believing that we could have stopped the death -- no we couldn't have! In my mother's case, her future was no good as she no longer had her mind, even though she didn't have dementia. Fate comes and fate does what it does. Every person dies -- no one is exempt.  There's nothing sick or twisted about death (unless it's murder, war, etc.); it's a natural part of life. We always need to tell ourselves that.

One last thing: When someone suffers at the end of their lives, it's usually just for a short time for most. My mother only suffered physically for a few days, if that. She suffered mentally for almost 2 years, however, but even that was also only for a short time, considering her 70+ years on earth. And the suffering stops at death. It's all temporary like everything else in life. Even our most terrible anguish cannot be forever.  

Please take care of yourself. You're not alone, as I feel that same pain you do. You can move past these terrible thoughts with time and reflection. 

All the best to you. Peace.

[Aus1412]

Matthew, I pray the Lord is doing something so wonderful for my mom.  Seeing her family.  She was the yougest of five.  Somethimes I think her mom, my grandmother, said "Enough", and brought her baby home.

Sometimes I think that God had me see my mom in that state so I would understand why He called her home.  My mom was on PD dialysis for about six (6) years, but otherwise active and happy.  When she was in the ICU, they put her on hemo dialysis.  

I feel like I owe you a fee because your words that we trick ourselves into thinking we could have prevented their death, fate does what it does, what we could have done better, and it is what it is settled my soul a few minutes ago.  I'm still a mess, but your words gave my soul something to rest on.  Having this happen made me realize how this happens everyday to so many people and how deeply broken, distressed and hurt thousands of people are everday  walking around  us.  My goodness, the pain.

I know you must be weary of my anguish by  now, but please know that your words helped.  They made me stop crying.  I will give you a break.

Peace be with you and your heart too.

 

[justme500]

My mom was in the hospital for 4 months before she passed away.  She just finished rehab. They didn't send her home to die and the doctors told us she was getting better.  She had 3 falls in the hospital.   Because she was in so long she started to get confused when they switched her floor.   The first time the nurses thought that might happen and had fall pads so she was not hurt.  Then she got transferred to a rehab floor. I told them what would happen they were short staffed and it was too much work to put down fall pads and put the top rail down instead of the bottom.    She fell and broke her pelvis and smashed her head.  She fell a third time after surgery.  I went every day and begged every nurse to put the top rail down instead of the bottom.    She went through rehab again after that at another hospital.  She was doing great.  She was only home a week before she passed away. I keep thinking I could have done something different.    Watching her suffer at the first hospital ( where I work to make things even more painful)  was the hardest thing and I have so many nightmares.   She deserved better.

[Aus1412]

I understand your pain with the hospital.  I am going to have my mother's entire stay investigated because all they talked about was how old she was and that I should expect her not to make it...due to her age.  Give me a break.  You should have your mother'sstay investigated.  I am going to do this on behalf of my wonderful sweet mom.

[Matthew48]

23 hours ago, Aus1412 said:

Matthew, I pray the Lord is doing something so wonderful for my mom.  Seeing her family.  She was the yougest of five.  Somethimes I think her mom, my grandmother, said "Enough", and brought her baby home.

Sometimes I think that God had me see my mom in that state so I would understand why He called her home.  My mom was on PD dialysis for about six (6) years, but otherwise active and happy.  When she was in the ICU, they put her on hemo dialysis.  

I feel like I owe you a fee because your words that we trick ourselves into thinking we could have prevented their death, fate does what it does, what we could have done better, and it is what it is settled my soul a few minutes ago.  I'm still a mess, but your words gave my soul something to rest on.  Having this happen made me realize how this happens everyday to so many people and how deeply broken, distressed and hurt thousands of people are everday  walking around  us.  My goodness, the pain.

I know you must be weary of my anguish by  now, but please know that your words helped.  They made me stop crying.  I will give you a break.

Peace be with you and your heart too.

 

I'm happy to know that I said something that relieved your pain for a very brief time. 

I'm in my second year, and some days are more than rough. But, somehow I get through them, by telling myself the same things I've told you. Some days are a little brighter than others, but some days I still find myself struggling to make peace with what happened.  Grief is a journey -- it's not a few months, 2 years, etc.  We do what have to do to survive. Just be wise and gentle to yourself. 

Peace and healing.