MENTAL & PHYSICAL HEALTH

Nothing Prepares You For The Ache

Losing my mom was one of the hardest things I went through

My mom passed away in 2017, 166 days after we learned how ill she was.

Nothing could’ve prepared me for what would follow, after that fateful day of 27 January, the day we learned that she ‘might have’ lung cancer, a diagnosis which was confirmed by an oncologist two weeks later.

A brief history

In the week after 27 January 2017, mom had several appointments. Tests that had to be done to set the formal diagnosis. In the next week, she had to go for a lung puncture, which was a disaster. Her lung collapsed, she had a lung bleed and she ended up in the ICU. She never returned home, as she never regained her strength. She stayed in a care home, and every time we thought she was strong enough, she either had to have chemo, or needed a blood transfusion, or developed an infection, and had to go back to hospital, ending up in the care home again.

On 12 June her body went into sceptic shock (a life-threatening condition that happens when your blood pressure drops to a dangerously low level after an infection). On 16 June the oncologist told her she couldn’t be treated anymore, and that was the last day she got out of bed. On 30 June she refused all treatment, and on 1 July she didn’t want me to leave her alone. I stayed at her side, sleeping in her hospital room. On 4 July she was transferred to a hospice, and I slept on a stretcher next to her. Eight days later she passed away.

I knew, I always knew

From the moment we received the preliminary diagnosis from our GP on 27 January — by law he’s not entitled to make a formal diagnosis — I knew my mom would die. The GP told her it doesn’t look good… those words should’ve prepared me.

It didn’t.

I took her to every appointment she had to go to. Sat there with her, hearing the bad news. Afterwards listened to her saying the doctors were wrong, that she would survive, and tried to gently point out the grave things the doctors had said.

I bottled up my own tears, and only occasionally let them out — sort of like releasing steam from a pressure cooker — like when the specialized nurse turned to me and asked me: and how are YOU doing? I never wanted them to turn their attention to me, fearing they would unleash the intense hurt I felt inside, because I was watching my mom slip away a bit more every day.

Only about a week before her 70th birthday on 4 June 2017, I sat there with a notebook, and wrote down everything she wanted for her funeral. The text from the Bible, the hymns, the psalms. She cried that day, said she felt bad for abandoning us, and I told her it wasn’t her abandoning us, but the illness being bigger than her.

I knew all the right things to say, but never felt them in my heart.

Inside I was breaking into a million pieces.

I watched her die

On 12 July 2017, I woke up and my first thought was: mom didn’t wake me last night.

Every night since I stayed with her 24 hours a day, she woke me up, coughing and spitting up blood, and not able to wipe her own mouth. That last night, she didn’t wake me.

When I woke up, I was too scared to look at her. When I did, I knew the end was close. I got up, and was too afraid to talk to her. Her eyes were half open, her mouth too, and her head cocked backwards. She was on her side.

I took a quick shower, got dressed and went to the volunteers in the lounge. Told them I think the end was near, and asked them what to do. They said I could just let it happen, or call the GP. I opted for the last.

The GP came, got brief contact with my mom (she talked like a little child, voicing her discomfort, telling him how tired she was), and then told me to let everyone come who still wanted to say goodbye.

They did.

Then, my daughter, son and I sat there, talking, occasionally laughing or crying, and constantly watching her. I hid my intense pain from them. Pushed it way down. I needed to be there for them.

My son left at 3pm, to get some groceries for us, so he could cook that evening. At that moment we thought the process would go on for hours.

Twenty minutes after he left, my mom blew out her last breath.

I watched every second of those twenty minutes, seeing life drain out of her, seeing her fighting for breath. We — my daughter and I — held her hands, and held each other’s.

It was day 166 since the GP told us it doesn’t look good, and still I wasn’t prepared.

I wasn’t ready.

I don’t think I ever would’ve been ready.

No more feelings

By the time mom died, I had switched off all feeling. I did that in the months prior, or I wouldn’t have been able to help her through it all, to have her lean on me.

She died on a Wednesday, and we buried her the Wednesday after that, playing the O Fortuna of the Carmina Burana by Carl Orff when her coffin was carried into the church. This was one of her wishes.

The next day our house flooded.

I cried, a lot. Because my mom passed. Because our house flooded. Because of the constant noise in our house to dry the floor and walls. Because I thought mom ‘sent’ the flood to take my mind off her passing, which it didn’t.

Because even though I cried a lot, I couldn’t grief.

God, it hurt so much that my mom wasn’t there. I couldn’t tell her how much everything sucked. She wasn’t there to listen to my fears. To understand me, the way she always did — without words.

My tears dried up. I pushed the feelings away. Concentrated on work. Wrote a lot. Always was busy, busy, busy. Never stopped to rest.

Or grieve.

By the time we reached 2018, I was a wreck.

Nothing prepares you for the ache

In the spring of 2018, my mental health was a mess. Just like Christmas 2017, my birthday in February 2018 was hell. I was low for days, crying. Angry with the world. And I didn’t know why.

Then came Mother’s Day, and the same happened, and then again a week before my mom’s birthday. It was only then I realized that those days that were important to us, were the days my heart ached even more.

Halfway through 2018, I was looking for a tree to park my car against, or a bridge to throw my car from. With me in it.

I realized I needed help and took the steps to get it. Only in December 2018, I finally started grieving, after a psychologist had unlocked my grief using EMDR. There was one thing blocking me from getting to my grief: the fact that I hadn’t dared touching or speaking to my mom when I woke up on that morning of 12 July 2017, and I was envious of the GP that he did get contact with her.

I don’t know how she did, but she helped me.

Those special days are still difficult — it really is true, nothing and no one can prepare you for the ache of losing a loving parent — but nowadays I can look back on beautiful memories, and smile. Those days are not all about tears anymore. They are about remembering the beautiful mom I had — with all her flaws — and the things she taught me.

I am, because she was.

This piece was written for a prompt of The Creative Corner (see below) hosted by Diana C.

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