November 28,2008
This time of the year is always hard for me as I lost my mom shortly after Thanksgiving. Today marks the fifteenth year since her passing. Even though so many years have come and gone, I feel the lingering grief in my deepest soul. The week that she died, she spent in the hospital dying from a broken down system. She had been a smoker most of her life and it had taken a toll on her body. She was in renal failure when she left us on that day so long ago. Her lungs had just about given up, but her heart continued to keep her with us. She suffer with oxygen hunger, she could breathe, but wasn’t able to process the air that she took into her lungs. Night time was a nightmare for her, as it made her breathing worse, she struggled so. One night she was in such agony that she begged me to smother her with a pillow. How that hurt to hear her ask me to do that. I told her that I couldn’t do that, but I would try to help her. I found her nurse and requested a strong sleeping tablet, which being a nurse myself, I knew would most probably ease her into the peace that she craved. After the doctor ordered the medicine, I explained to her that she would probably go to sleep and not wake up. I wanted to make sure that this is what she really wanted to do. I loved her enough to grant her last wish. Even though I am glad that I did, I still feel the pain of her passing with my granting of her last request of me.
My brother,Jack and my sister,Alonea were at her bedside when she drifted away. Aleta and I were home staying with our father. When the expected call came, we took our father into see her. He had been there earlier in the day. He cried that he wasn’t there with her when she passed. He lived another few years in the home of my beloved Aleta. During those years not one of us told him of what had happened that night that she left us.
My mom always made pecan pies for Thanksgiving. That year she could not make them. My daddy, bless his heart, got out all of the ingredients with our help and made those pies. He wouldn’t let us help him and he insisted that he was doing it for our mother. That is the only time that I can remember him cooking anything.
How I miss my parents. For all of you out there with living parents, be grateful that you can still hug them and hold them tight for some day they too will be gone.
I remember those days as if they were just a few days ago. Sitting there next to Ma ( as we called her), watching her struggle for air. You know that would not happen today. I have learned enough about death from dealing with hospice patients on how to ease into the end of times. Damn them, for not helping her.