What A Difference A Week Makes

Warning: Not a bit of knitting, spinning or dyeing content, and sad besides.

Last Sunday I was enjoying a beautiful day at Cranberry Lake surrounded by family and friends. This Sunday I am writing this as I prepare to go to the nursing home where my mother is a resident to continue our vigil at her bedside as she lies dying. My mom, whose name is Carol Lee, has been a resident there since she fell and broke her hip 4 1/2 years ago. (Keep exercising, and build strong bones.) Last Tuesday I received a call from her nurse saying Mom had pretty much stopped eating and drinking and did we want to put her in the hospital. No, was my answer. Mom will be 90 on September 24 and if it is time for her life to end, then we do not want to prolong it with artificial measures. Hospice was called and is helping us help Mom through her final days on earth. Her leaving us is tremendously sad, but what is sadder is watching her lie in a bed, essentially reduced to being an infant again, although she can speak enough to say I love you when we tell her we love her.

Here Mom is 3 years ago on her birthday. I just searched through my digital photos and this is the only one I have of her, since when she was living with me I did not have a digital camera, and I lost a ton of digital pictures when my lovely son erased them. But that's an other story. Anyway, this is Mom on her 86th birthday.

Mom has a deep religious faith which has helped her through a not always easy life. Last night our friend Noel, a Presbyterian minister, came and read the 23rd Psalm to her and prayed with us. Even though we sometimes wonder where she is because it is obvious she is moving between living and dying, I could see a sense of peace descend on her and her body totally relaxed as Noel was reading the Psalm. And she fell truly asleep for the first time all day. It was quite a powerful thing to witness, and makes me wish I had that much faith in an unseen power. But that is probably not a topic for this blog.

So that is the reason I have not been posting. By the time I get home I am exhausted and can only sit and vegetate, or try to sleep. If you believe in such things, please keep my Mom and our family in your prayers. And I will be back when I am able.