Tempus Fugit Redux: Reflections on a Lost Parent

My mom as she was on this date in 2009. Little did we know that she only had six years left to live and that of those, her last five would be her worst.  (Photo Credit: Alex Diaz-Granados)

Tempus fugit.

It's still a source of astonishment and bewilderment to me, even a decade later, how unpredictable and traumatizing life changes can be.

Consider my mother's last 14 years on Earth. She entered the 21st Century (back in 2001) a bit slowed by the passage of time but still full of life and hope for the future, and died lost in a fog of dementia and impotence in the summer of 2015, leaving behind two adult children who distrust and dislike each other.  

Between January of 2001 and July 19, 2015, my poor mom went through the following health crises:

1. A diagnosis of gastric antral vascular ectasia (GAVE), which is often referred to as watermelon stomach. Per the Mayo Clinic's website,"the term comes from the internal appearance of the stomach lining in those who have gastric antral vascular ectasia. Engorged blood vessels in the lining of the lower part of the stomach often form as red stripes, and resemble the dark green and light green stripes on the outside of a watermelon. These blood vessels are prone to bleeding into the stomach." In brief, Mom was bleeding internally and as a result, she was constantly tired and became less active as time passed. Her condition improved a bit after the blood vessels in her stomach were cauterized, but she was never quite the same
2. A diagnosis of skin cancer on her left arm, for which she underwent successful radiation treatments in 2007
3. Blood flow issues that affected her ability to drive, starting in 2008. Mom would get so dizzy while driving that she eventually ended up just driving her Mitsubishi Mirage around the "big block" in East Wind Lake Village. She sold her car in late November of that year and ended up having to depend on others to take her grocery shopping and to run errands
4. Sometime after Christmas of 2009, the last holiday season in which she prepared and hosted a nochebuena dinner on December 24, Mom started having trouble walking. Her back would ache for hours at night after a normal day's worth of her limited routine. She was no longer doing any gardening (a favorite activity of hers), and basically just focused on cooking dinner and doing some laundry, even though that was no longer easy for her to do. Eventually, my half-sister offered to do our laundry at her apartment, but I stopped letting her do my laundry because she ruined several Old Navy T-shirts I'd just gotten as a gift by washing them with bleach
5. The pain in her back became acute and, eventually, incapacitating. The initial diagnosis by her doctor at Leon Medical Center was a pinched nerve, but after several attempts to ease Mom's pains with nerve blocks failed, the doctors ordered an MRI of Mom's back in April of 2010. They discovered that several of Mom's vertebrae had shattered, and some of the lower discs were pressing on her spinal cord and, as a result, causing the intense pain. Surgery was done at Mercy Hospital in the late spring of 2010 (but not before Mom made out a new last will and testament); the operation was a success, but the effect of six hours under anesthesia were simply too much for Mom to stand
6. After the operation, Mom suffered from the debilitating effects of dementia and depression, which eventually robbed her of her quality of life and hastened her death

Mom doing her physical therapy at a rehab center, circa 2013. The effects of dementia robbed her of her desire to get better, so she stopped going to her PT sessions not long after I took this photo.

As I have written in previous posts about Mom's last years, her last five years were not particularly happy or peaceful. Both my older half-sister and I did our best to care for our mother, and I will not deny that Vicky helped me in that difficult and often heartbreaking task. But I will also state that she often hindered my efforts by trying to undermine my role as the de facto head of the household, a role given to me by our mother. She quarreled with the best home health aide that Nursing South had assigned so much that the poor woman eventually quit and was replaced by someone Vicky liked more, even though the new home health aide often did less than the one she'd replaced.  In addition, my older half-sibling resented the fact that Mom trusted me more than she trusted her; as a result, there was a lot of conflict and drama...both of which I really could have done without, if you ask me. 

I wish things had been different then. My mom was the kindest, sweetest, and wisest person I have ever known, and she deserved a less painful and gentler ending to her days. I know that I did my best to care for her and manage the household wisely and sans reproach, and my conscience is clear about how I behaved between Mom's diagnosis in the spring of 2010 and her passing five years later. 

Source: https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/mayo-clinic-q-and-a-watermelon-stomach-isnt-what-you-might-think/