Mom's dying...very slowly.

This is hard for me to write, but it's best that I write it here, in this blog because it's happening "In the Bluff" and I don't want so much publicity on it. It's going to be really really hard for me when it happens.

My Mom IS dying. I guess I'm just finally coming into the accepting mode and hitting a bit of the all natural "grief" that comes when you finally quit fighting and realize that it's actually happening. I have no idea how much longer it's going to take, but this afternoon during a nap I had a dream that brought it totally to my attention. And that just plain SUCKS. I awoke from that nap by sitting bolt upright and starting to cry. The realization was just so much like a smack in the face.

And it's not like I've not been aware. Hell, I've been going over to Mom and Dad's house ever other day for 4 months now. I've noticed lately that I'm going less, and now I see that she's getting worse and I wonder if that's why I've not been going over as much as I was before. Dad doesn't seem to be upset by me not going over there either, and I would think that he would be. Maybe he's actually aware of what my brain is doing, but I doubt it. Today he also admitted to me that if she is dying that maybe it's for the best to not try to keep her awake, or to put her on sleep schedule...or keep her from taking those pills that she loves that keep her asleep all the time.

I don't understand though. It's as though she's given up on life, and that just doesn't make sense to me. It almost feels like suicide in a way. It may not be an actual suicide, but lying in bed just waiting to die isn't living, and refusing to get up and move and to TRY to enjoy what little life you have left is just beyond my comprehension! I don't understand it, and in a way I don't think I ever WANT to be able to understand. I have a feeling the only way to do so is to be in that situation myself, and no...I don't want that kind of understanding.

Of course now I go through another process...one of shame. I find myself ashamed of so much (and of course now I am tearing up, because of this shame) that I wish I had done during my lifetime to try to make my Mom proud of me...to honor her. I'll never be able to hand her a manuscript to my book and tell her to read it and tell me what she thinks. I'll never be able to let her read the dedication and enjoy the realization that I wrote it for her, because she was the inspiration that made me continue writing because she won't be there. This is so saddening that it's maddening, and that makes me cry.

I find myself mourning right now, but I'm not mourning her death, but rather the loss of her. She's not really my Mom there anymore lying in that bed. If I handed her that manuscript, she couldn't read it. She's already gone too far into her own journey. For that, I mourn.