Grief Never Ends, Part 3

 My mom fought with all her being and beat throat cancer. She took care of her mother, my grandma until the very end and while losing my mother-in-law and all the other chaos, my mother was diagnosed with lung cancer. She had already had so much chemotherapy and radiation from the throat cancer that she had been left with painful neuropathy, three heart attacks, and kidneys that barely functioned. The doctors said there was no way for her body to tolerate any more chemotherapy and they started her on immunotherapy. It made her weak at times, but it seemed to keep cancer at bay. However, only six months after the tragic death of my mother-in-law, my mom found out that cancer had spread to her brain and she was placed on hospice.

My mom lived with my sister and my sister had a family and worked as well as pregnant with a surprise baby eight years after her first. I moved in with my sister to help care for my mom while my sister worked. Caring for my mom wasn't hard. She was stubborn and insisted on doing almost everything herself. I watched her like a hawk, but she wasn't going down without a fight. Sometimes that fight was even against me. There was one time she wanted to go on a walk. I told her it wasn't a good idea because she was a little on the wobbly, but she took off down the driveway anyway regardless of my wishes. She didn't make it far before she took a tumble, thankfully in the grass. She would not stop moving for anything. She never slept because she was scared to. She was afraid that if she went to sleep, she wouldn't wake up. She would whisper down the stairs to me multiple times a night, in hopes that I would go outside and have a smoke with her. 

She went on like that for what seemed like the longest time, but as time went on, cancer in her brain slowly became more evident. She would get her words messed up and when she would write things down that she wanted me to get from the store and it was simply gibberish. She was fading away slowly, but she refused to give up. She just kept going and going until one day when the hospice nurse made her visit and asked my mom when the last time she laid down was. My mom couldn't give her a straight answer and the nurse insisted that she needed to lie down. While she didn't want to, my mom did as the nurse asked her and that would be the last time she went to bed. It was a short 10 hours later when my sister and I watched my mom draw her last breath. This death would leave me feeling more defeated than any other. Maybe it was due to our tattered relationship that had finally been carefully stitched back together. Maybe it was I felt cheated that I finally had my mom completely in my life and she was taken from me. I'm not sure the cause, but I was defeated. My wall fell a little bit more. 

I stayed with my sister a little longer. I helped her prepare for the birth of my nephew and then helped her take care of my nephew for a while. I returned to what was now my father-in-law’s house with my fiancé. My father-in-law was not in the best shape. Since the sudden death of his wife, he had been drinking himself to death. He was always a heavy drinker, but it was to the point that it is all he did. His health was showing the consequences of that drinking. I spent my free time with him. I cooked as he instructed me on what to do. Eventually, I had to convince him that he needed to go to the hospital. His breathing was shallow, his skin had a yellow tint to it and I was deathly afraid he would simply fall asleep and not wake up. He had already been in the hospital a couple of times due to his COPD, but this was different. I finally told him that I believe he was running out of time. I guess that was enough for him to decide to go to the hospital. 

When we arrived at the hospital, it was evident to the doctor that he had liver failure. The shape he was in surprised everyone that saw him. He was transferred to a bigger hospital to see what could be done. After lots of testing, they informed him that he had two options. Get treatment for this liver cirrhosis which may or may not work and drinking was no longer an option or go home on hospice. He chose hospice. After preparing the house for him, my fiance and I picked him up and brought him home. 

He condition deteriorated on a daily basis. He slowly became wheel chair bound and eventually bed bound. I was his caretaker and he slowly started to resent me for it. He couldn’t be transferred from the bed to his wheelchair anymore because his skin was so thin that any amount of lifting would quickly rip it. He was mad at me and anyone else that told him he couldn’t get up anymore. 

One evening, he caused enough of a stink that his other son came to help him get in his chair. He got in his chair, went out on the porch and had me cut a small piece of hair that had gotten missed the first time I cut his hair and he was ready to go back in. I noticed he had stopped drinking much of anything even his whiskey that he loved so much. That evening, before bed, he told me he had to get in his white clothes because it was almost time. He was not completely there at this point, but I did what he wanted me to do and tried to get some sleep. I wasn’t asleep long and it became obvious he was slipping away. He still wouldn’t let me give him any medicine to help ease his pain and we called hospice. 

When the hospice nurse came, he took medicine no problem and slipped into a more permanent unconsciousness. We sat bedside with him until he passed away. He was at peace. It was not a necessarily hard death but all of the deaths combined had taxed me beyond my years. Being a caretaker had taxed me. All my losses combined had shaped the person I had become. Every day is a fight and the grief never ends.