Update 12

Mom is still hanging in there.

It was another hard night of Mom waking up at 5:30am and getting antsy and getting up for the bathroom. According to my aunt, at one point Mom looked right at Dad and told him to drop dead. Which we all know is not at all a Lynn thing to say.

Two of Dad's childhood friends from CT came into town yesterday and spent the day with us. After a Skyped church service they came back to the house and when Mom woke to their hellos she said a faint "Hi!" and wrapped her arms around Nancy. I was very surprised by this, to be completely honest, although no one else really was. She had a short conversation with them consisting mostly of one word answers and a lot of water. It was lovely having Nancy and Lynn here, a day full of new stories from and about Dad and reminiscence from earlier days.

Later, once Johnny and I came back from a long ordeal trying to print pictures at Walmart and after Nancy and Lynn left but before dinner, I sat down in a recliner with the new Best of Sesame Street DVD I found and bought (SO EXCITED!) and listened to Jennie as she read Mom her favorite book The View From Saturday. Mom was incredibly uncomfortable in her bed so we got her in the rocking chair again for a bit as Jennie read, also stopping periodically to help her drink. The pain lines appeared between her brows but every time Jennie asked if she wanted her to go on, Mom would nod or say "Yes". Even after she was back in bed, and even after we shoved a bag of frozen beans behind her back due to major back pain, and even after Jennie went to eat and Erin took over they read close to half the book. At one point when Jennie was reading Mom told us to get her a pen and paper for both sides (direct quote, by the way) and we tried, but she couldn't even grasp the pen and then she fell back to sleep. We know that she wanted to write each of us a letter before she wasn't able to anymore, and we wonder if that's the unfinished business she keeps referring to and what she was trying to do when she asked for a pen and paper.

Every time I see Mom today she's paler and paler. When she sleeps her eyes are partially open. It's becoming very difficult for her to take pills. Today she actually spat out the morphine pill and we had to try again. Breathing has become slow and shallow and just now she began to wheeze a little. It frightens me, and it makes the want to be down here with her significantly less because I'm honestly not thrilled about being right there when she dies, or waking up to find she died as we slept, or anything like that. But here I sit, next to the silent TV that is playing the recap of the Steelers/Jets game that was avidly watched by Dad, Johnny, and Uncle Fred. We were once again going through photos upstairs and I keep finding these beautiful photos of my mom during her college years, or with Lauri as children. I showed one photo to a couple ladies at church this morning and they both said "You know who this is? It's Emily!" only it was actually Mom. Apparently we look a lot alike.

We also found a CD that the five Blood ladies recorded back at Christmas of 2002 and on it is my Mom singing "How Beautiful" by Twila Paris. Once I figure out how I will be adding it to this blog. If I can't figure out a way, I will find some other way of sharing it with you.

Time grows short, and my heart tells me it will not be long. I'll be surprised if she makes it to tomorrow evening. But we're ready to let her go. It's time. She hurts, she's dependent, she's fairly unresponsive. It's not fair of us to keep her here, no matter how she feels about it being too soon. It will be hard, but we have spent the past two weeks growing accustomed to the idea. In some ways she's already gone. We aren't happy that she must go, but we can look back on her life in all it's beauty and wonder and know that, though it was short, it was a life fully lived.