hospice
The end began in January. I found mom hypoxic and unable to walk at home one day. She went to the hospital, and later came home, but I knew this was coming. It gave me time to prepare. When she decided to leave the hospital on hospice in April, I moved in with her. I left my job, my husband, and two kids behind for a month to be her full-time caregiver, just like I had promised I would.
April still feels like a fever dream looking back, a kind of time bubble that sat outside the real world. I was immediately busy. Handling all the paperwork, taking all the phone calls, meeting with every single person on her care team. The process of it, the dying itself, never scared me. I had helped with my grandmother's hospice before, and kept up with Nurse Penny on TikTok, which helped me keep calm.
Life was lived by the medication schedule. We were up at 10 for the nurse visit, followed by naps, and finally sleep around midnight after the last meds. I slept on the couch next to her in the living room every night, just in case she needed me.
The days were strange. Mom was generally a happy patient, but wasn't lucid a lot of the time. She had these wild hallucinations, like being in a fishbowl with The Grateful Dead, a band she never mentioned to me before in my 30 years on this planet. She drank so. much. milk. Though she stopped eating pretty quickly. But we had good times, too. Family visited, we watched Frasier every night, and we talked about the family tree.
The highlight was when my sibling came to visit. We sat and listened to Mama talk about her childhood, tell petty stories about people she didn't like, and stories from her partying days before us. For a moment, it felt like nothing bad was ever going to happen. It was just us girls, like it always had been. On the weekends, I let my kids stay with us. Mom was so happy to see them, and they loved her so much. I believe it's good for kids to be a part of big changes, even death. Through all of it, we very specifically did not cry (in front of her). She didn't want tears, so we didn't give her any.
Her last day was hard. She woke up agitated and angry, wanting to go home. She tried to get out of bed, but since she couldn't walk, it took both me and my dad to hold her back and get her situated again. She didn't understand. She thought we were hurting her. She didn't trust me.
She fought medications that night, and I had to call the nurse to ask how to get them in her. Eventually, mom started falling asleep, and I was able to use a dropper to slowly administer the meds. I stayed awake all night next to her, slowly dripping the medicine into her mouth and just listening to her breathe over the Frasier laugh track. Early the next morning, she didn't breathe again. I sat with her for a while, holding her hand and talking to her, before I woke my dad and aunt to tell them. Calling my sibling was the hardest part. It was over.
The following hours were a whirlwind of everyone coming in and out of the house. The funeral home staff to pick up her body, the hospice nurse to destroy her meds, the supply team to pick up the hospital bed, and the hospice therapist to sit me down and remind me that I did my job very well. She died peacefully, at home, with those she loved. I went to the funeral home with my dad to turn in all the life insurance papers my mom had meticulously organized while she was still lucid. When I finally got home, I slept for 15 hours. There was no evidence anything had ever happened, except my mom was gone. It was over.
We had her cremated like she wished, and my dad had necklace urns made for all of us. We had a very small ceremony last winter to memorialize her. It was a nice thing to do. My necklace sits on the living room shelf next to my husband's mom; I still can't bring myself to wear the necklace. My kids' are put up until they're older, if they want them.
April is long over, but the quiet that followed remains. Now, my grief doesn't look like medicine schedules and hospital beds; it looks like a Diet Coke from Sonic or the smell of kerosene when I'm refilling the heater. I think of her the most when I'm driving and reach for the phone to tell her something, only to remember there's no one to call. I spend a lot of time wondering what Bonnie would say about my life now, or how she would handle things I'm going through. I did what I promised her I would do. I stayed with her until her very last breath. Now, I just miss her every day.