gratitude…

If you haven’t read the last post, this is basically a continuation of that one. So for reference and chronology, you may want to start there.

The last post left off after we had treated and dressed my mother-in-law’s wounds last Sunday, and I thought I heard her mumble “thank you”. It turns out those would be the last words she ever spoke. She slipped into a coma that night and never woke up.

That Sunday evening before we treated her wounds, my husband asked if he could take his dad along on our nightly dog walk so he could get some fresh air, which really meant he was asking if I would stay alone with his mom for 15-20 minutes. Naturally, I agreed. We didn’t have a chair in her room yet, so I sat on the floor outside her door and just listened to her breathe.

Last Monday evening I again offered to stay home while my husband and father-in-law took the dog for a walk. When I don’t know about something, the lawyer in me demands that I research the crap out of it. It’s why I read so many random books and articles. Because I don’t know much about being in a coma, I read about it online and learned there are studies that show patients in comas can still hear us. So that night while my husband and father-in-law were out, I was determined to talk to my mother-in-law, to comfort her. 

If I’m being honest, I was scared to go talk to her. Terrified, actually, although I’m still not sure why. I even chickened out a couple of times – I would walk towards her room and immediately turn around. Finally I told myself this wasn’t optional, that I would regret it if I didn’t say something to her, and all I was doing was wasting time. As I slowly walked to her room, trying to decide what I could say to comfort her, I felt my heart pounding. I leaned against the doorjamb and watched her breathe for a few minutes. Even though she was in a coma, I wanted to be real with her. I didn’t want to say that we’re best friends, or that I loved living with her. Neither of those are true. So I told her that I love her son, and that she raised a good man. I told her that she had put up a good fight, and that if she wanted to continue to fight, that was okay. But if she was tired of fighting but was still holding on because she worried about her husband, I told her not to worry. I promised I would take good care of both my husband and hers.

My husband’s siblings arrived the next day (Tuesday) and looked at old photo albums and shared stories together in their mom’s room. I went to work that morning, but spent most of the morning regularly checking my phone for updates. By mid-morning I started to develop pretty severe chest pains. It felt like I was having a heart attack, although I suspect it was just an overabundance of adrenaline from all the stress. The weight of being somewhere other than where I should be was pulling at me, so I told my boss, and went home.

We spent the rest of Tuesday speaking with the hospice nurse, the social worker, and the chaplain. I will discuss my frustration with Kaiser hospice later, but for now I will just say that Tuesday was only the 4th day hospice came out to my house, after 2 months of diagnosis and handling everything all on our own.

The hospice staff didn’t expect her to survive the evening, but when it came time to go to bed, she was still breathing. My husband volunteered to stay up with her all night because someone needed to continue to administer morphine every 1-2 hours, and thus far my husband had been taking care of it. He agreed to wake us all up if there were any changes. I woke up early Wednesday morning and went to check on my husband. He looked exhausted, but was still sitting with her. I asked if there had been any changes, and he said no. I went downstairs to let the dog out and to grab some water for my husband.

About five minutes later, the dog and I headed back up stairs. I walked in my mother-in-law’s room and saw my husband standing next to her, holding her wrist like he was looking for a pulse. “Did she stop breathing?” I asked. “I think so,” he whispered. We shut off the oxygen machine to listen closely for a breath, but none came. That was it. She took her last breath about half a second before I walked into the room. My brother-in-law went to wake up their sister, and I told my husband he should probably go wake up his dad. I was alone with her for a few moments. I opened my mouth to let out a sigh, and out poured the words “thank you”. I didn’t intend to say it, but it also seemed fitting that my last words to her be the very same last words she spoke to me.

And I am grateful to my mother-in-law. She drove me crazy sometimes, but she sure loved my dog. And she raised an incredible man, the kind that would sit with his dying mother for days, holding her hand. And, as awful as this sounds, by helping her die I feel better prepared for when my mom eventually passes from her degenerative brain disease. She taught me how to prepare someone else for death, and what to expect. I think she may have made me a better daughter.

Maybe I should be upset that she didn’t always say nice things to me, or about me to other members of her family, or that she complained a lot, or that she constantly told me what a great wife her other daughter-in-law is, but never told anyone what a great wife I am. Maybe I should be, but I’m not. I’m just grateful for the intricate and imperfect role she played in my life.

And maybe that’s the key, friends. Not everyone in our lives has to leave us transformed. Not everyone we meet has to challenge us to become better versions of ourselves, or inspire us to think differently, or even make us feel loved.  Maybe it’s enough that they found a way to put up with all of our imperfections, like we put up with theirs. Maybe it’s enough that their death reminds us, like the quote below says, that life is singular, and has no opposite.

And for that we should be grateful.

“It’s interesting how people use that expression, ‘life and death’. As if to imply that life is the opposite of death, but birth is the opposite of death. Life has no opposite.” – Dawson’s Creek

Smell ya later.
– Linds