Saying Goodbye, Part 4: The Beginning of the End

My last trip to see my Mom around Veteran's Day Weekend 2013 was really good and, most importantly, Mom seemed to be feeling better. She even wrote to everyone of her "Pink Ribbon Talk" followers, for what turned out to be the last time, that she was at a "turn in the road" and that she seemed to be getting better. Tragically, she was right about being at a turn in the road, but in the opposite direction.

Scott and I went to see my family for Thanksgiving; due to the weather, we weren't able to travel to Vermont until Thanksgiving Day. When I saw Mom that day, I knew something was wrong; I was shocked to see how yellow her skin was, though it seemed that I was the only one who noticed it. Only a week before, she was asking me about what we wanted for dinners and planned a special dinner to accommodate Scott's low-carb diet, but when we got there she did not have energy to do much of anything other than to sleep. For the actual dinner, she wasn't able to eat with us; she only had a piece of pie for dessert. She had had a few "lows" previously during treatment so we all thought or wanted to think that this was just another low and she'd come out of it in a few days. 

That weekend happened to be Scott's 30th birthday and I had made plans for the day so we could not stay in Vermont. Early in the morning of when we were about to leave, we woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of Mom yelling; she had fallen on the floor on her way from her bed to the bathroom just off of her bedroom. This had happened a few times before in the preceding months. We rushed into her room to try to get her up, to no avail. Eventually, we were all up and decided to call the local Fire Department to help. I had to help her change since her nightgown was now dirty; it is a very sobering experience having to change your own mother, as she did for you when you were little. Unfortunately, most of us will experience this, though I would rather do it than have a stranger do it. Help arrived and they were able to help her back into bed; we all went back to sleep. When we woke up later and packed the car to head back to Maine, I went into her room to say goodbye. Probably one of the last coherent exchanges that I ever had with my Mom was this one, where she apologized for all of it. It was heartbreaking.