Here's Where it Starts...

Four years ago today I got the text from my sister that Mom had decided to die. 

Then we spent what seemed like almost the whole month of August waiting for her to go. 

She stopped eating first. Then finally realized that as long as she was still drinking she could hold out for longer so she stopped that too. It took a little over two weeks from when I got the text (which was a couple of days after she had stopped eating, my sister waited to see if she was going to change her mind) to when she finally passed. On my grand niece's birthday, which of course was the worst day for it to happen. 

Looking back it's hard to believe it was only 2 1/2 weeks of waiting. It seems like it was longer. But time stretches when you are waiting for your mother to die. 

Those first 8 days of August 2019 were the last days of Cake and Compliments Month. I mean, I tried to hold it together that year, and tried to give it a comeback the next two but I gave up. Didn't even try last year. And it's so gone that I was looking at my calendar today trying to figure out when to do something and was honestly surprised to see my birthday on it at all. 

I'm always trying to figure out when it will get better. Like how long after Dad died did I feel okay with knowing my dad was dead? And I think it was when my mother died. Because up until that point part of the grief of my father dying was that my mother was without him. Which she did not want to be. 

And even then, "okay with it" is a sliding scale. Are we ever really okay with it? Even when someone has been sick and you know they are no longer in pain and so part of you is relieved for them, there is always the part of you that would like all of the people who are important to you to always be here. 

And I think, which I've talked about before, the fact that we waited to have her funeral in October so Uncle Denny and Aunt Carol could make it made it harder as well. Because from August to October nothing was "finished." We were in this hold pattern of wait for that until after the funeral. Knowing that you can't move on because you are going to be steeped in grieving as soon as the funeral comes. 

And then came 2020. 

All of us grieving for so many things while my grief for Mom was still so raw. Life didn't get back to "normal" instead "normal" took a walk and never came back. And then we lost Brent's mother too. Suddenly we are just adult orphans trying to figure out why that should be a problem. I mean, we didn't live in the same city as our mothers did. We didn't see them very frequently. We didn't even talk to them more than once every month or so. Longer for me once my mother started not wanting to talk on the phone, longer for him before the pandemic when we could go a few months without speaking. 

But somehow that feeling of being untethered in the world still hit us both. 

There are regrets, of course, that come. Unfinished business. Things that weren't said that will never be said now. And then there are pockets of relief, which is probably even worse at times.

My mother was sick. She was lonely. She never stopped grieving the loss of my father. She was fading away from us mentally for a while. She was so ready to die she would tell you all the time. Then she finally decided to just make it happen. Not suicide, that's against her religion, so she would never had said it was suicide, assisted or not. But...well...helping death through the door. She decided she was done. 

There was a family history, I've probably written about it before. Her grandmother, when her grandfather died, she wrapped things up. Sold the farm, wrote to all of the family, said her piece to everyone and then she died a few months after he did. Just went to sleep and didn't wake up. No signs of "foul play" or self inflicted wounds or overdose. Just pure force of will. She didn't want to live without her husband and so she didn't. But she was a responsible sort so she took care of all the business first. Amazing. 

I think my mother was mad that she hadn't been able to pull off the same stunt. 

And, honestly, without an autopsy her grandmother might have had help herself as well. We will never really know. 

But I know my mother made a choice. 

And four years ago I got the text messages saying that it was coming and to prepare myself. 

And someday I hope I will have.