We'd gone in to check her, and to give her some more liquid morphine (just in case there was any pain), and I noted that her breathing was not right, rapid and deep. We who have medical knowledge call it "air hunger". I told my brother that I was sure that the time was coming very soon, and went to find a stethoscope. No, I'm not sure why, but I guess I just wanted to listen to her heart. I couldn't find any of the probably 7 scopes I have hiding around the house, so I went back to my mom's room. Her breathing had slowed considerably. I started counting the seconds between breaths. When I got to a minute and 24 seconds, I realized it was over. She didn't look particularly peaceful, like you always hear people say at funerals and such. She just looked old, and drawn, and finished. Not my mom. She hadn't really been my mom for over a year, since the dementia took over.
We made the calls we could make; the neighbors, her brother, the hospice people, the funeral home, not necessarily in that order. Some of the neighbors came over, and my best friend. My best friend and I took a walk, and talked about other stuff. The funeral director came up to take her away, and one of the neighbors helped him move my mom. I'm fairly certain she was under 60 pounds at the time, and I'd told him that when we talked, so he opted to come alone, and not bring his entire crew, which I told him would be fine. I was perfectly happy to help, if needed. After all, I've done it before in my work on the ambulance. No big deal, really. But my neighbor jumped in and offered to help, and really seemed like he didn't want me or my brother to have to do this, to zip my mother into a body bag. OK. No problem.
The next day, we had to go to the funeral home to do some paperwork and figure out what was going to happen. Mom thought viewings and funerals were barbaric, so we opted not to have them. She wanted to be cremated, so we arranged that. The funeral director was absolutely wonderful. And because I have such a warped sense of humor, and because I knew it would have pleased my mother, I offered to take the death certificate to her primary care physician's office for her signature, and to return when they called us to tell us that my mother's ashes were ready, so I could pick her up and bring her home, to sit next to my dad's urn. A weird custom, this whole burn and urn thing, but for now it seems right.
Things went fairly well for the next few days. Lots of phone calls, and cards, and people stopping me when I was out and about to tell me how sorry they were. I think, or maybe I hope, they understood when I told them that it was OK, that she'd been suffering for a while, although not in pain, and that now she was no longer suffering. The only time I got annoyed was when some well-meaning friends tried to tell me that she was an angel now, that she was with my dad and her family again in heaven, that god called her home because he wants her to watch over us now. I know they meant well, and that very few people know that I'm an atheist, and that my father almost certainly was an agnostic at least (so probably not in heaven), and I'm sure they believed what they said, but to me it's all bullshit. I'm sure if they knew I was an atheist, some of them would tell me I'm going to hell, even though I'm a good person. I could probably, if I wanted, let them know I'd already been to hell, watching my mother die slowly, and not being able to help her. But I'm fairly certain they wouldn't like that much. After all, I'm a heathen.
I found out the other night, from one of my coworkers, that another of my coworkers is absolutely certain that I will end up being completely overwhelmed by my mother's death. This is because I don't have religion. I have not admitted my atheism to him, but he has figured it out. OK, it's not too far a stretch, even for him, to guess that I'm a nonbeliever. All he has to do is look at my car. He accused me of having a "hijacked Christian symbol" on my car. I couldn't quite figure out what he was talking about, until I remembered the Darwin Day sticker with the Darwin fish on it. Um, hijacked Christian symbol? Christians hijacked the FISH from the natural world, thanks very much.
This particular coworker has always kind of slammed me for what he thinks are my beliefs. He's treated me like I worship Satan. He's never actually asked me what I believe, or don't believe. I told him at one point that I was a skeptic, which he equated with being an atheist, which isn't strictly true. Yes, I am a skeptic, and yes, I am an atheist, but there are people who are skeptical of other paranormal claims, yet are still theist/deist. We were talking about ghosts and such at the time, so I'm not sure how he made the jump from "skeptic" to "godless heathen". I guess he talks about me behind my back rather a lot, especially to this particular coworker. The one who told me about this grew up in the south, and when he came to work with us, in the north, I guess he'd never knowingly met an atheist. I'd heard him say some things about religion in general, so one weekend when we were working together, I brought in the movies "Religulous" and "The God Who Wasn't There", and asked if he wanted to watch them. He was transfixed, and I think it started his transformation from christian to... what? I don't think he's sure yet of what he thinks, although when he does say something, it sounds like he's a deist. He told me the other night he's excited about going to a Unitarian Universalist church near his home, something I'd mentioned to him some time ago. It seems like a good fit for him. He admitted to this other coworker that he's no longer a christian, which bothered the other coworker. "It works for me," the other one said. Yeah, and believing bullshit might work for me, too, for a while, but it's not the truth. I prefer the truth to a somewhat comfortable delusion.
So, despite my coworker's pronouncements of sliding off into an abyss, I feel fairly good. My mother isn't suffering. The whole thing was expected. She was 89, and had lived a good life. Why should I lock myself in my room and cry uncontrollably for weeks on end? Yes, I'll miss her. Yes, because I'm an atheist I realize I'll never see her again. Yes, that hurts. But it's also the way things are. And I'm OK with it. We've had a lot of support from hospice and friends, and things are going fairly well.
One of the things I'm not fine with is the fact that on Thursday, after I'd spent all day cleaning out my bunnies' condos, I went back to my room and found one of my buns dead on the floor. He'd been fine all day. We'd had a good snuggle just that morning, and he'd eaten a baby carrot. He poked me in the back with his nose while I was cleaning, and visited everyone who was still condo-bound. If you'd asked me which bunny was going to drop dead that afternoon, I wouldn't have picked Jack. He was only 6 years old. I was more broken up about the bunny than I was about my mom, to be honest. And once again, I got Facebook messages about the Rainbow Bridge, which bothers me as much as talk about heaven does. I loved this bunny. At about 5 weeks old, I'd saved him from certain death from my "outside" rabbits. I'd nursed him back to health, even though for the first few nights I was sure he wasn't going to live. He was a lovely, snuggly little boy. He was the one who somehow managed to open the cage door of one of my girl buns, and subsequently was the reason I came home from work one day to hay and fur under my blankets at the foot of my bed, and 5 little baby bunnies all snuggled there, none of which their mother wanted to feed, so there I was, stuck syringe feeding baby bunnies again. Two survived, and they're still with me, so at least I have a little of Jack left. But no more. All my buns are spayed/neutered, so I will have no more little wiggling packages in my bed. But I will still miss my Jack.
And I will still miss my mom.
No comments:
Post a Comment