My Mom, Dad, and Me
When faced with a terminally ill parent, family member, or friend there are always thoughts about what you should have said before they passed, or even asked.
For my it happens that my mother Frieda Graham died on this exact day in 2004. We all knew it was coming. When my father died she was diagnosed with cancer shortly after. She had it for a while but just didn't voice it to anyone that she was having problems.
She decided against treatment she wanted to be with my father. Her decision was made, there was nothing we could say to change her mind. At first I thought everything was on my shoulders. Taking her to appointments, getting her medicine, taking care of my children, husband, home, while working. It all took a tole on me. That is until I was facing being ill once again myself.
The Dr.'s thought I had Cancer but after all of the tests were done they came up with I was taking on too much, the stress was literally killing me, so I was instructed to slow down while getting Hospice involved. Finally my brothers stepped into help out with her care which helped me out greatly, just in time for me to find out I was pregnant.
This gave my mother new life, she wanted to live and swore she was going to see that baby be born. The Dr. was thinking otherwise but her thinking was she was going to see it happen. Sometime during my pregnancy soon after a routine visit I stopped feeling the baby move, after a visit to the hospital we found that the baby had no heartbeat and had just stopped everything. This was February 9th, 2004.
From the day I lost the baby I didn't stop bleeding I was getting more sick by the day while keeping the news of the baby's death to myself and hearing my mother talk about the baby all of the time. I finally broke down and spoke to the Dr. and to Hospice they told me I had to tell her no matter how painful it was because they both knew she was only holding on so she could see that baby and it was unfair for me to lead her on with a birth that was not going to happen.
So I told her. She cried, I cried, and we held each other. A month to the day on March 9th, 2004. My mother passed. Right in between my Father's Birthday March 5th, 1943, and their Anniversary March 15, 1969. March is a very hard month for me to say the least.
Soon after I told her she ended up in the hospital and never came out. It was hard seeing her deteriorate so quickly. Three days before she died she heard a baby crying and she was telling my brother Timmy who wasn't even there to go and get Pam she fell and got hurt. She was apparently reliving her life at the time. When she was coherent. She had remembered my husband and myself being together and having our son but she didn't remember the girls so I kept showing her pictures of her grand children. It was hard.
The day before she died they called in everyone to come and see her. Kind of like her last respects I suppose. The worst part of it was telling her she could leave. Daddy was waiting for her. That I would be OK.
What I would have said thinking back at it would be don't go, I need you, I am not OK without you.
That night before she died I went to give her a hug and leave and she wouldn't let me go so I ended up kneeling on a chair and slept with her all night. In the morning I told her I was going to go home take a shower, check on the kids, and I would be right back.
While I was gone we got the call that she had passed. They told me she was holding on to life, ME, and she couldn't or wouldn't leave until I had left. I felt like I had let her down. I would have held on to her forever if I knew it would have kept her here longer.
Today 12 years later I still have questions I want answered. There are things I want to say. There are things I would have done differently. No matter how sick I was I should have been with her every day. There is never enough time to spend with those you love. Time slips away to quickly leaving you with The Things You Should Have Said.
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