Friday, August 29, 2008

With the Father

My mother died today. She died at 12:45.

We arrived about 9:15 in her room (Sha, Dad, GC, and I) and she seemed to be taking very deliberate, almost gasping breaths. Her eyes would open wide with each inhale, and her exhales were raspy as if she were puhing her air out through water or moisture at the back of her throat. As she was struggling to breath, there was a nurse there who had attended her many times through her hospitalizations, and who knew her, and who was trying to make her comfortable. She would not or could not respond to any of our voices.

We were all pretty upset by what we were seeing, an hearing with her struggle - which apparently had begun not long before our arrival. Her body was stuggling to move with every breath she could grasp, and her face looked as if every move was painful. Dr. Wabash had told us that as her body shut down, that kind of reflexive breathing was normal, wasn't painful, and was just a sign that her life was nearly spent. Just the same, it was very difficult to see, and we all requested that they try to make her more comfortable, and ease her pain, with some morphine - which they did.

After a while, she seemed to be more calm. Her breath continued to be somwhat labored, but she did not seem to be in pain. From the moment we got there, her eyes never really registerred that we were there, and she couldn't seem to speak any words. It seemed she was sleeping, but her eyes were open.

After we could recognize that she seemed more calm, we all sat near her, holding her hands, and talking with eachother about her. About the way that she seemed to reach peaople, and about the way that she had touched the people who worked with her at the Hospital. We each had moments holding her hands, holding her feet, hugging her and kissing her head. As time passed, her breathing gradually slowed.

Looking around the room, we each would have climbed into her bed could have managed it, just to be able to hold her - it was on all of our faces. The look of people who love a person ehnough to not be able to imagine life and living without them, and knowing at the same time that they are drifing away. My Dad sat by her side mostly, and Sha on the other. GC and I circulating , and taking moments we found to be able to hold her hand, and hug her.

In a moment that Dad got up to walk over on to the window, I sat next to Mom, and held her hand, and kissed her cheek. Her beaths were coming now with long gaps in betwean them. I looked her in the eye, and it seemed like she reisterred me. I looked into her eyes for a moment, tears in my own and tried to love a lifetime in that look. The corner of her mouth curled up either in a smile or at the very begining of a Weber-sad moment, and I said outloud that we all loved her. Looking at me, she breathed a quick weakend breath - and then she did not breath again.

I looked over at Dad, and rose out of the chair, so he could sit with her. He bent at the waist with his eyes on her hand, and wept aloud for a time. He leaned over her, with tears heavy in his eyes, and kissed her on her cheek many times. We each of us, took a moment to hold her, to kiss her cheek, and to love on her one moment more.

I think the last moment where Mom looked at me was one of two things. In her last moment, she either glipsed the open arms of Jesus, pulling her on or she looked at me as was sad to the point of tears (weber tears are those accomponied with something, that if not for a red face and tears, would look like a strained smile) for having not been able to be here for her family. She loved her family. Perhaps in that last moment she considered everything in my life, in our lives, that she wouldn't be able to celebrate with us, or mourn with us, or guide us through the best she knew how. Or, perhaps, she smiled, seeing God - and his comfort, and joy, and the celebration of the angesls and saints, at knowing that one who had finished the race, was coming home. Perhaps it was both, in the same moment.

Courage has many faces. But at the heart of many faces of courage, is facing pain. Knowing that your heart may be broken, knowing that pain will come, and stepping forward when all logic and reason would tell you step away. Knowing the pain is coming, knowing that it may be something that changes you forever and not knowing who you will be on the other side, and deciding to stand where you are - next to someone you love who is dying, and by those who stand near you, suffering in ways and dimentions maybe greater than your own, so that the one who is dying will know - if they can - that you are there, and they are not alone; and so that the others, who carry the weight of the remainder of their lives without the presence of the passing one they love, know they need not carry it alone.

It is not a celebrated courage. There are no monuments, like those that honor conquered geography, or tyranny, or opression, or violence, or obsticles, or so many other things that are recorded for the world to see. But there it is. I may have been able to see my way through to that before, but now I know it. I have seen it in my sister, and my Father, and in mom's best friend, and in me.

Thank you, to those of you pray, and have prayed for me and my family - in moments here and there, and in earnest with passion. Thank you.

Mom-

I love you. I cannot tell you here, or there, how I will miss you. In every happy moment I will think on you, and know that you are with the Father, and with all the saints which have gone before you, laughing, and chearing, and smiling with us, as if to warm further already lauphing hearts. In every moment of sadness, I will think back to the courage you showed me to mourn, to feel pain pass into and through me, to rest on the Rock, and to know that you cannot both live and run from the wind. I miss you every day. I will love you always. I will try to live in a way that makes God and you proud of me. I will try to love my wife in a way that will make you smile.

I love you so much.

Monday, August 25, 2008

Another Blow

Today I asked to have some time with Mom alone.

I was supposed to be a big day. We have been waiting all weekend to talk with a social workor that works at the Hospital. She was, according to the on-call social workor we spoke with on Saturday, supposed to have list of the options available to us for "long term" nursing care which were covered by Mom's insurance. We had been given a Hospice pamphlet by a rep on Friday, and a booklet of various homes, facilities, and care options. But because we were going to meet with a social worker with a narrowed-down list, I didn't look too closely at it (Dad looked at it and said that it was hard to make heads or tails from the "facilities" booklet). When we walked into the hospital we went into Mom's room to see if she was awake - but she wasn't awake, so we went looking for the floor social-worker. They paged the social worker when we asked, and we went to sit in the loby-like area near the elevators. As we were waiting I asked Dad to see the "facilites" booklet, and the Hospice pamphlet. I learned a few things about Hospice that I didn't know - that Hospice was a "final transition" organization, that mainly is in the business of making terminally ill patients who are in the final days as physically, emotionally, and spiritually comfortable as possible - and where pain, infection, etc. are concerned, they will manage discomfort and pain with medications they can use without saline IV's - but thats it. I guess I always thought Hospice was like a full-time nurse, present, to administer whatever treatment battery that was being used to battle whatever the illness is, as long as the patient wishes, to whatever end the doctors and patiens wish. But that is not the case. Hospice, though they are on-cal 24/7 will normally visit 3-4 times per week, and will clean-up the patient, and talk with her, and will comfort her, and bathe her, and do what they can to manage the patients pain - and do nothing to extend or shorten the patients life. This became clear to me a few moments before the social worker and Hospice Rep approached Dad and I, after responding to our page.

The convesation began with introductions, and Dad standing up next to tables and chairs.
I suggested that the conversation we needed to have was likely longer than what Dad's questions and the representatives needs to communicate with us could endure with us all standing, and that maybe we should all sit down. To which I was immediately met with "slap-you eye", and cuffed with something close on the order of "I want to stand so I can see her lips and understand her better - if that alright with you-". I stood up and walked around the corner - can't remember for what now - and when I came back the social worker and the Hospice rep were seated, and Dad was standing opposite them, looming. I seated myself next to them and listened. Eventually it became apparent that the Social workor did not have the information that we were told that she would, she did not know anything about Mom's specific insurance benefits, and that we had an understanding of Mom's medical needs in terms of an IV and nursing staff to administer her Chemo, etc, that seemed to come as surprise to them. Dad and I indicated (Dad had communicated to me what the last meeting with Mom, He, and Dr. Wabash had discussed) that she would need to be monitored regularly for blood chemistrly, that she would need electrolytes and other treatments she was currently recieving at the hospital to continue wherever she was finally moved. To which the Rep and the social worker responded with confusion.

The meeting ended with our telling them that we needed to talk with Mom's doctor, and that until we had a more solid understanding of Mom's nursing and care needs we really couldn't identify what facilites were appropriate. The social worker agreed that was a good idea. She gave us her card, and asked us to give her a call when we had a chance to get things figured out with Mom's doctor.

I asked Dad if I could stay with Mom for the rest of the afternoon - and he graciously let me have that alone time with her.

A few hours later, several nurses came in and were going to clean Mom up, and change her mattress, and do some other, necessary, and very compromising maintenance on her. I excused myself, and was on my way to the Lobby area when a very nice Doctor asked if she could chat with me.

She introduced herself to me, again (I had met her the a few days before, she recognized me) again, and indicated that she was in the last meeting Dr. Wabash had with Mom and Dad, when Mom's mental state was sure enough to make decisions. She indicated that the decision Dr. Wabash and she understood that Mom had come to, was that she was done with treatment and wanted to be as comfortable as possible until she passed. Wide eyed - I told her that Dad had indicated to me - and mom in the few moments of Lucid conversation we had on Friday - that her liver Chemo was still being administered in order to retard the loss of her mental acuity as much as possible. She said, that at the meeting, it was clear to both she and Dr Wabash, that mom wanted no further treatment of any kind. **I think the Hospice Rep and the Social Worker spoke with this doctor earlier, and that the questions we were asking about long term nursing care didn't match the terminus of treatment which was being respected. At any rate - she said that Mom's condition was worsening rapidlym that there had been no indication that the chemo treamants mom had ben recieving were affective at all on the cancer in her liver, that the Lactilose which was preserving some of her mental acuity before was no longer working like it should, that mom's weakness was progressing, and as of this morning they had discovered that Mom was in renal-failure. She said, that she suspected the direness of the situation had not gotten through to Dad for one reason or another, and that with the news that her kidneys were failing, that it seemed Mom would not last much longer, and that it would behoove her to get her wherever she wanted to be for her last days (Mom asked to be at Shannon's house near Shannon and the grandkids (Mom LOVES her grandkids - and forever one of the saddest things in my life will be that those kids won't know her, and that my kids - shoudld we ever be able to have any -won't ever laugh with her, or feel the warmth of a hug from their grandmother).

This was all very difficult to hear, and very much a shock. I thanked her for her courage to talk with me, and give me some very bad news in order to try to halt some very dangerous confusion. I gave her my cell number and asked her to call Dr. Wabash, to see if she could meet with Shannon, Dad, and me ASAP. I then walked back to the condo, called Shannon - leaving a message that she should call me back ASAP - and went into talk to Dad. Which I wish I could say went smoothly - but which, in fact, looked like Sherman's march to the sea when complete.

Last Friday I was sad that Mom was talking with us about her final days, which Shannon and I understood to be many weeks away. This weekend I was sad to watch Mom struggling in her own mind, and sad that our time seemed to be slipping away from us. Today I am sad that even those hopeful weeks seem have been snapped away, and it is days left , not to talk with our mother whom we love so dearly, but left to hold the hand of the woman whom we love so much while there is a little warmth left in them, and with almost no idea whether she even knows we are there.

I was with her for a few hours today. I prayed for her, and held her hand. I put chap stick on her lips, and gave her water. She opend her eyes wide in a rush, and tightened her grip on my hand in hers, and she said, "I love you Matthew". I told her that I knew she loved me, and I loved her too. By the time I finished those few words, her eyes were lost again, and I was as heartbroken as I have ever been in my life that that may be the last time I heard those words from her.

Sunday, August 24, 2008

Last Days

I am in St. Louis. My father called me Thusday night to tell me that Mom's condition - actually her mental acuity, her tiredness, and her strength - had faded quickly, and that she had to be put in the hospital. He told me that he had spoken with her Doctor, and that the Doctor had told him, that the mental fragmentation, the weakness, her failing body might not improve, regardless of the treatment options, and that her condition coould decend further. He also told me that they had discovered a new tumor on her spine. The tumor was ina very difficult place to reach, was not there 2-weeks ago, and that he and mom had decided not to risk surgury to remove it, and decided that they would not actively seek to treat the tumor.

I was on a plane Friday morning.

Friday afternoon when Dad picked me up from the airport, he said that Mom was feeling much beeter, and that her mental acuity had improved after being admitted to the hospital.

When we got to the Hospital, she was alert but her mind was slow. She wasn't in pain.

Sha, my sister, was there, and we all talked about what the doctor thought was the situation, and what Mom wanted to do. The intent was to to find a nursing facility or find "home-care" for her, as her care took more than one person could provide, and my Dad could no longer keep up on his own.

2-weeks ago, when I was there visiting with my wife, Mom and I chit-chatted, and talked a little. She was feeling good then, sleeping alot, and was very hopeful that this was just a low-point in the treatment that would see her much better on the other side. We talked a little, mostly the length and subject of little exchanges that you have with people that you've known a long time, and the kind of conversation that doesn't amount to a lot, and carefuly avoids shoals of conversation where disagreements are likely. Snalltalk. "How is Honey?" (my wife). "Have you decorated anymore of your house?" "Hows Max?" (my dog). "How's work?". "How are Honey's parents?".

I was shocked when I saw her, because her skin was ashen, and her face gaunt and drawn and looked like it belonged to a much, much older person if not a different person all together. But when I first saw her, she was over at Sha's house and stood to welcome me, and hugged me, and early conversation revealed that she was tired, and ran out of energy quickly, but that conversations with her doctor had not lead her to believe anything but that this treatment had every chance of working, and that she expected to recover from her treatment.

I spent 3-full days there with she and Dad. I was not prepared for what I was witnessing. Mom spent all 3-days (other than the hour or so we spent at Sha's house with she, her husband D-, and their kids) on the couch at their apartment, and most of that couch-time sleeping. I could not resolve what I was seeing with what Mom and Dad had said to me with regard to Mom's health, and the prospect of her recovery - and unprepared as I was for what I was seeing ... I didn't know what to do, or what to say, or how to spend my time.

Now ... 2-weeks later, she cannot hold any kind of real conversation, and has only intermittant lucid moments, where you can be sure she understood you, or can communicate clearly even simple thoughts. Sha said that about a week-and-a-half ago, and she had a short conversation with her, and mom had been on the phone with someone throwing the book at them - so She thought Mom was maybe on the up-swing. Apparently after that day, she has been in the bed, with almost no appetite, no control over her body, and little in the way of mental faculty. Literally within 2-days she went from having a completely lucid an heated conversation with someone over the phone, to not being able to string 2 simple sentences together and keeping her mind focussed on even a simple question like whether she wanted another bite of pancake or not.

My father - in general - is almost not communicative about his heart or his feelings. He just doesn't or cant, or hasn't for so long, that he doesn't know how anymore. I don't really know why. He has much emotion - he's not a stone - he tends to get angry quickly, and voices frustration and irritation with real flair. He has depended on Mom for most of his adult life in one way or another, and in sometimes more fundimental ways than others as he himself has some not-insignificant health issues, but other than she, has generally depended only on himself. When he called me in Colorado Thursday night, he was crying. He said that he just couldn't keep up with the laundry, and the care, and the shopping, and her medication, and help her to the bed, and the bathroom ... he said he could almost do it, but he just couldn't keep up - and that he was having to admit her to the hospital. The woman that had kept up with him, and who he's been able to depend on for likely as much as he ever expected and more, couldn't do for herself - and he just couldn't do it on his own anymore ... and he was heartbroken. it wasn't anything to do with him, it was more than anyone could do on thier own - but with so much emotion, even clear logic takes a back-seat to pain, and he was hurting, and just felt like he failed mom.

Here, now, we all feel that way. Like we have all failed her somehow. Like we should have spent more time with this woman, that always made time for us. Like we should have done more, for the woman that was never contented with all that she had done for us. Like we should have, could have, might have...

I've written about the situation we are in now before, and all those supositions are true. My heart aches though. Tears fall, and threaten to choke the air from me. The pain scares words from my mouth, and the thought of living in a world without my mother, opens an empty hole in the darkness behind my eyes, and makes me afraid. Afraid of the loss of the linchpin, the family keystone - afraid of a world I have never really considered. There is still peace. I can see it from here ... and I know it is there. And when I need it most, I know that God will be there, and is there even now. But for now, I am afraid. I am sad. I hurt.

Sunday, August 17, 2008

The Darkness Within

There is no sinner greater than I. I wonder often how a person with the thoughts in my mind, and the desires of my heart could be touched by God. How can everyone not see how black are the beats of my heart?

Its important to understand, here, that Sin, begins far before the act that makes Sin material. Becasue I have not amassed a long list of acts and crimes, doesn't mean that thoughts and desires which are far outside what God would ask and want for me, don't spin and wail and thunder through my mind like storm

Sin begins in a flawed and wicked heart - and I cannot imagine a heart more depraved than my own. The darkness in my heart, perceived darker still because of the touch of the Father.

Non-believers have not had the Spirit infused into their hearts, they have not had their eyes opened to their sin. They may be aware of it, but not like the eyes of a believer ... eyes that knew themselves as helpless, and poor, and without hope of their own, and eyes that witnessed the hand of the father reach into the grave in which they found themselves, and pull them out, and love them, and make them sons and daughters of the Alpha and Omega, and give them a sense of God - of the creator of all that is, that whispered energy and mass and all the universe into existence - deep within them, and in almost everything they see. For them, the vile thoughts and desires that rage within, are made blacker still next to the light in us where God tells us that we can prevail. Short of changing reality, I wouldn't exchange a true image of myself for blindness, but truth is a weighty and persistent beast.

What a two-sided, person I am. Torn and ripped by a heart that desires what I wish that God couldn't see, and in the same hour wants for nothing more than a life lived glorifying him who opened my eyes. It is war in me ... a war. I forget that it's there at times, but it is a war that never ceases. And the tool most often used to damage the heart-scape across which the darkness screams, is the whisper that it is beaten, that the light has won. The light will win, and the light gains always against what would attempt to drag me to places where defeat would color my life - but the war is never won for today. Today, the war rages.

I see today, so I struggle, and I win. When tomorrow is today, there will be a struggle, titanic and cosmic in scale and power, and so used to the struggle have I become that I don't notice until I find my heart filled with what God would cast out of me. Every day ... struggle. Every day ... Battle. So thankful, in this fallen existance, that war carries on.

Sometimes when I'm at church, not often but sometimes, when I am singing, and I hear the choir, and I hear the voices of those around me that I don't know, but lifted all the same to God ... I close my eyes, and I think of Heaven. I can almost feel the joy of lifting my heart in song, and joy, and worship of Him who saved me, covered in warm light and the song of the saints who have gone before, and an eternity of no more struggle. A thousand years of knowing my own heart, full of love, and compassion, and desire for nothing more than to sing with a perfected heart-voice to him whose ears are tuned to hear each and whose smile at the sound lends softly to a heart that is tuned to know the joy of that touch. A thousand years by ten thousand, by forever... Beginning the day my eyes close here, and open for the fist time, there ... with no struggle.

Lord, change my heart here, grant me the desire to see and serve the needs of those who need, and to have compassion for every person. Fill me with love Father, and give me the desire and strength to do what must be done, and the eyes to see those things which you set aside for me to do before the founding of the Earth. Let me see the world, and the people with whom I share this moment, as you see them Father. Please, Lord, don't forget your promise to your children, that you will not leave us as we are, but that your Spirit will make us ever more like the Son that died to bring us into you.