We are now all in the hospital, Mom, Me, Camille, two cots next to Mom’s hospital bed, and a lot of bags surround us. I have such absolute deep sorrow in me. At the same time, I am thankful that she is still with us. I wonder if her laboured but relaxed breathing will just stop. I wonder how it will end. My precious mother, now forgiven completely by me, free of the debts and disappointments of her life. I wonder if she feels that her’s was a life well-lived. What are her regrets? Does she think about that now or does she simply dream, visiting the memories of her life, passed, or does she create new ones for the future? She is doing her work, said Thalia, our hospice nurse and angel. What had me troubled was the work she was going through the other night, the night that we left her care home for what is told will be the last time. She was oh so very distressed, holding her forehead in either or both pain and worry. It was a terrible thing to watch, knowing that there was nothing I could do, I couldn’t reach her as the pain was too much. I could see all of the things she was facing. Sometimes it is hard to even separate emotions from physical feelings, when they are bad.

She’s better here, they said, she’ll get the comfort care she needs. Now we can rest with her, and lie down with her. But there are no more conversations, only monologues. I do love a monologue, just ask my husband, and now here lies my most captive audience ever. I should say the things I need to say, while she is still here in here body, at least a bit.

I must write this now as my body and mind are both so tired. I am not thinking well, straight or in any other direction. I am a crumpled paper bag, wet in the rain, that slowly takes on the moisture to soften, and then completely disintegrate onto the pavement. I don’t know what I am supposed to do. I have been doing my best to make this right, to do what I can to connect at the end, but it all seems so futile now. If I believe that her spirit goes on, that means I can speak with her after, too. To be in comfortable silence with her seems right, and why not?

There are many questions left unanswered, about our life together when I was a child, my father, so many things. She was the only one left to know things that will now die with her. I had questions to ask, but not the time. I was too busy worrying about her care, and her pain, and I, we, were drowning in the responsibility of it all, not knowing what to do.

So now I sit here, wondering, and waiting to know when she will pass. Any amount of time is a gift, but what do you do with it? I write in hopes that I can revisit, knowing that I will revisit these questions at a later time, all of them, and I will have to come up with the answers all on my own.