Mother and her passing

My children lost both of their Grand Mothers in a two week period. Their mother's mother passed the first week of February of colon cancer, after a long period of  suffering.  My mother passed February 19 and I was there. I learned from my daughter that it is OK to tell your dieing family member that it is alright to go, so they don't worry about you being alright on your own.  I did that and about an hour my Mother left. When she was dieing she looked like no one I ever knew. I guess our death changes us as we decide to move on to the next world.

I know both of those ladies are in heaven. They worked tirelessly for their families. My Mother raised five children and I don't know how she maintained her sanity. She was a saint to deal with five children and her husband. I know I am a handful for my my wife and we only have one boy, hers.  I have raised two children on my own and they kept me running all the time. God bless you Mother. As I continue this blog, I am sure I'll have stories to share of my antics as a boy.

At her funeral I spoke of a song I sang as a boy in the church choir on Mother's day. I had one letter to sing and I was very excited and nervous to sing my letter. As my part was coming up, I looked up from the song sheet and saw my mother in the second row crying.  There are not many things that make me cry but seeing her cry made my eyes well up and I couldn't see the song sheet. To this day I don't even remember if I got my letter out.  The song was written by a man in WWI;

This is the poem: MOTHER

M is for the million things she gave me,

O means that she's only growing old,

T is for the tears she shed to save me,

H is for her heart of pure gold,

E is for her eyes of love sweet shining and

 R means right and right she'll always be,

put them all together  they spell MOTHER 

 a word that means the world to me.

I will always miss our early morning coffees!

It's been weeks since my last blog...My Mother, my health, my family and the car

I know it has been weeks since I last made any comments and for that I apologize because I really want to make this a habit. Not for  you the reader, but for me. I want to type better and I want to be a better writer.  If you actually read this, thanks.

My wife Kristy went out to her folks in OK a month ago. She and her brother drove to Wagner OK. She was there for 8 days and came home a day early. While she was there she told me she was having fun meeting her parents and other family. It sounded like she was having a great time.

She didn't know that I was having one of my worst colds in a years. I was taking a medication that had an exporate in it and it was making me cough uncontrollably. It was terrible and when she would call I would keep it together and usually listen, but later in the week she started hearing me cough. I knew she would come home early if she thought I was sick and sure enough she decided to come home a day early.

All this week I had been taking care of Josh, her son, my step son and was doing OK remembering all the little things she does for him. The Friday when she had decided to come home I called her after dropping Josh off at school just to see where she was.  A few minutes after that call I received a call from my sister who informed me that out Mother had had a stroke and was not expected to live.

Being alone was an odd feeling to take this news, especially when you are used to having a family. I told her I would call our Dad and brothers, all of whom would be alone too. Except Geoff in Dallas. All of us took the news in stride. I double checked with Dad to make sure there was a DNR order in her living will.

The hospital told my sister and brother in law (Chuck)  that they did not feel it ethical to keep her on a machine and after telling my sister, Lori that I was sure there was a DNR order, she told the doctor to take her off. At least that was the sequence I thought happened, I believe in retrospect Lori told them to take her off on her own. This bothered her, but when she told me of it, I told her she did the right thing. It is a tough thing to do telling folks to let you parent die.

I should explain that Lori and Chuck had taken care of Mother for about a year as she had Alzheimer's disease and had fallen, thus breaking her leg. This did not allow her to stay in any senior homes, so Lori and Chuck took care of her.

I want to take a break here and write more tomorrow.