"There she comes"

We spent several hours sitting with mom this evening. I spent most of it holding her hand..... She's very weak, and is slimming down again. She's barely eating anything. Another thing common near the end.

She is in and out a lot... she's not completely incoherent yet, but close. She falls alseep in the middle of sentences, and forgets things almost as quickly as they occur, but recalls other things. She couldn't remember Ashley's name. At one point she stumbled over trying to recall Scott's name, too. not that she doesn't know who we are, she does. It was distressing to her though that she could not remember their names. She knew Scott's started with an S, but couldn't quite say it. It was like one of those moments where you know you know it, and it's on the tip of your tongue, but you just can't quite get it out. Her breathing is very coarse and loud. It sounds rough, and almost like a bunch of bubbles popping. I guess this is very common in people who are within a week of going... According to the literature and the nurses, the stage that mom is in right now is like having 'one foot here and one foot there'.

It was a difficult evening... seeing her that way. The things we all talked about. The long silences of no one knowing what to say, but all of us just wanting to cling together in the same room,... just to be near her. Dad & I did the most crying... Just about any time that we looked across the room at eachother, and then before leaving tonight, we hugged and both started sobbing so much so that neither of us could let go of eachother for several minutes. It's really starting to hit Scott more now, too... I think with things finally narrowing down to the wire, it's becoming more real than ever,.. and time to face the heart-wrenching reality that she will be leaving soon.

The girls are going through their own grieving,... for Courtney, I think she just feels numb. She asked me why she hasn't been crying. I just explained to her how everyone grieves in their own way. Some people cry a lot, some people get real quiet, some go numb for awhile, some get angry... and that her lack of tears right now does not mean she loves Grandma any less than the rest of us. She's going through her own process. Ashley is kind of in the same boat as Courtney right now, but Brittney,... well, she cried & cried for about half the drive home before she finally fell asleep in the car. That was hard.

Before I close, I wanted to leave you with this poem that dad shared with me this evening from a pamphlet he was given by the hospice nurse. It's absolutely perfect.....

'I am standing on the sea shore,
A ship sails in the morning breeze and starts for the ocean.
She is an object of beauty and I stand watching her
Till at last she fades on the horizon and someone at my side says:
"She is gone."

Gone! Where?
Gone from my sight - that is all.
She is just as large in the masts, hull and spars as she was when I saw her
And just as able to bear her load of living freight to its destination.
The diminished size and total loss of sight is in me,
not in her.

And just at the moment when someone at my side says,
"She is gone",
There are others who are watching her coming, and other voices take up a glad shout:
"There she comes"
- and that is dying.'