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My mother's passing
Content Warning: Parent Death.
My mother passed away on December 28, 2020, around 10:00 A.M. She had turned 66 on the 17th of December.
For several days before that, she had a Cheyne-Stokes breathing pattern. The hospice nurses told us that this is common before death, and it gave us a little bit of heads-up that the end was actually near.
In instances where people who have experiences Cheyne-Stokes breathing patterns are ever able to speak afterward (it can happen due to other non-fatal circumstances too), they do not indicate that it brought them any discomfort, but it can be disturbing for the family to listen to because it sounds labored and kind of, for lack of a better word, creepy.
I have tried to read about it, but my eyes glaze over. The hospice nurse who came to write down her time of death and clean her up and get her ready for the people who were going to cremate her was very kind and stood and talked with my dad and me for a long while. She told us that that kind of breathing was a comfort in a way because, in her experience, with near-death patients it sort of seemed like they were more absent from the body than not and that it was a more reflexive breathing thing.
The last real conversation she had with us, she reached up and held the side of my face and petted me a little, and that's a precious thing to know. She basically said "I want you [my dad and me] to know that I love you. I want you to know I want to help you."
The latter was probably her explaining that she did not mean to be difficult with regard to some of the things that distressed her when we were caring for her, like issues with the catheter that my dad had to learn to deal with. She was bedfast to a hospital bed we squeezed into my parents' bedroom for just over a week before she passed. She was awake and aware some of the time, but she slept a lot, and day by day she was slowly less and less aware. The first day was very difficult for her emotionally, but after that she settled in and was calmer and calmer. We left her alone some as she slept, but someone watched her closely and came to speak anytime she was awake.
We had a baby monitor in the house even a few weeks before that when she stopped coming downstairs most days.
My mom was strong and stubborn, but throughout her life she was faced with so much physical disability and pain.
I'm glad she's home now and able to be with her mom again.
I miss her, and realizing that she isn't ever coming home again is the thing that hits me sometimes with a fresh kind of breathlessness. I cry less than before she passed, though. It was harder knowing she was here but that I couldn't talk to her or help her anymore.
I have to make some different choices now, and my sort of flat depression thing makes that harder. I don't really know what to do with my life now.
I'm glad that the one thing that came out of being home most of 2020 was that I got to spend time with my mom and have a peaceful routine with her for a while before she died. While she knew a lot of discomfort basically all year, and I regret things she never got to do in the future, she went down pretty fast and I got to talk to her and watch tv with her and make her sandwiches which she for some reason thought were way better than making her own, so the boredom and isolation had some part that was worth it.
My mother passed away on December 28, 2020, around 10:00 A.M. She had turned 66 on the 17th of December.
For several days before that, she had a Cheyne-Stokes breathing pattern. The hospice nurses told us that this is common before death, and it gave us a little bit of heads-up that the end was actually near.
In instances where people who have experiences Cheyne-Stokes breathing patterns are ever able to speak afterward (it can happen due to other non-fatal circumstances too), they do not indicate that it brought them any discomfort, but it can be disturbing for the family to listen to because it sounds labored and kind of, for lack of a better word, creepy.
I have tried to read about it, but my eyes glaze over. The hospice nurse who came to write down her time of death and clean her up and get her ready for the people who were going to cremate her was very kind and stood and talked with my dad and me for a long while. She told us that that kind of breathing was a comfort in a way because, in her experience, with near-death patients it sort of seemed like they were more absent from the body than not and that it was a more reflexive breathing thing.
The last real conversation she had with us, she reached up and held the side of my face and petted me a little, and that's a precious thing to know. She basically said "I want you [my dad and me] to know that I love you. I want you to know I want to help you."
The latter was probably her explaining that she did not mean to be difficult with regard to some of the things that distressed her when we were caring for her, like issues with the catheter that my dad had to learn to deal with. She was bedfast to a hospital bed we squeezed into my parents' bedroom for just over a week before she passed. She was awake and aware some of the time, but she slept a lot, and day by day she was slowly less and less aware. The first day was very difficult for her emotionally, but after that she settled in and was calmer and calmer. We left her alone some as she slept, but someone watched her closely and came to speak anytime she was awake.
We had a baby monitor in the house even a few weeks before that when she stopped coming downstairs most days.
My mom was strong and stubborn, but throughout her life she was faced with so much physical disability and pain.
I'm glad she's home now and able to be with her mom again.
I miss her, and realizing that she isn't ever coming home again is the thing that hits me sometimes with a fresh kind of breathlessness. I cry less than before she passed, though. It was harder knowing she was here but that I couldn't talk to her or help her anymore.
I have to make some different choices now, and my sort of flat depression thing makes that harder. I don't really know what to do with my life now.
I'm glad that the one thing that came out of being home most of 2020 was that I got to spend time with my mom and have a peaceful routine with her for a while before she died. While she knew a lot of discomfort basically all year, and I regret things she never got to do in the future, she went down pretty fast and I got to talk to her and watch tv with her and make her sandwiches which she for some reason thought were way better than making her own, so the boredom and isolation had some part that was worth it.
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I'm sorry for your loss.
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I hope you're doing relatively ok bb *HUGS*
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