Hi, my loss is very recent and still feels rather surreal. My 81 year old mother died on 25th July and the funeral was last Thursday 11th August. Although she weak lungs and had survived three bouts of pneumonia in the last three years, her death was a lot sooner than we expected. Last March (2015) she was in hospital for about 6 weeks after having pneumonia and was then also diagnosed with COPD and heart failure. Since then Dad looked after her at home and she had been reasonably OK until earlier this year when she started getting very wobbly and then started falling regularly. She lost all her confidence about going anywhere, and my husband and I (we live 2 miles away from them) were getting phone calls asking if we could go over and pick her up as Dad couldn't manage it. She also had dementia although both she and dad seemed to be in denial about that :(
In the end we said 'you have to call an ambulance, she needs medical attention', plus my husband was struggling to pick her up without damaging his back; so that same evening she fell again and Dad called 999 and mum went straight to hospital. They gave her oxygen and did lots of tests, her oxygen saturation was really low. It's no wonder she'd been struggling at home so much :( The hospital said it wouldn't be safe for her to move home and dad wouldn't be able to cope, it is an old house with stairs everywhere, so Dad and I looked at lots of care homes in the area. That in itself was quite stressful, thinking it has to be right as she would be there for at least a few months or a year, as we thought. In the end we decided on a really nice one (thankfully mum had enough money to cover it) and she was quite happy to move in there, though I don't think she realised it was permanent even though we told her. We knew that medically she had reached the palliative stage but were optimistic because she had pulled through from this sort of thing before.
She was only there about 5 days until she became bed bound because she was so weak, and after they did more tests she went on 24 hour oxygen. We were told that she wouldn't be with us much longer.. she passed very peacefully away 12 days after she moved in there. Writing that makes it sound as though she gave up because she was not at home, but really she was happy there and the staff were wonderful. It's just that her respiratory failure had progressed much faster than any of us realised.
Although we had a few days warning that we were going to lose her, I don't think it quite registered and I still can't believe she has gone. It doesn't seem real at all. Dad is struggling with it of course and my older sister has been staying with him for about a month. This has meant that he has had company which is great but she is going home today and I am worried about him being alone at home. He has been drinking more than is healthy for some time, while he was caring for Mum (and I know that her dementia was quite demanding), and has had a couple of falls himself. We have talked to him about it and how much we love him and that we're worried about him hurting himself, but also it's so soon after losing mum I don't want to be pushy. I work full time but am the only child that lives nearby, my sister is a couple of hours away and my brother is a few hundred miles away in Scotland. I have always been the one that dad and mum have called on in an emergency, and although my sister does all she can (she has her own family and problems), sometimes I've felt feel like an only child. The other night we got a phone call at 9.30pm and both husband and I immediately thought 'What's happened??', it is so instilled in us now.
At the moment I don't feel that I have time to care about myself or how I feel about losing mum. I am sorting out most of the paperwork but mostly what I think about now is how I'm going to make sure Dad's ok, along with my work and my own personal life. Then I start feeling guilty and selfish for not wanting to drop everything to look after him. I also think I have inherited unnecessary worry from my mother, it used to drive me mad that she would always imagine the worst was going to happen, but now I find myself doing it as well...
I didn't see her during or after the evening she died, my last memory was that afternoon when she was sleeping peacefully, and the day before we'd exchanged smiles and kisses. I wonder whether that makes a difference to the acceptance that she is gone?
Sorry for the long post, thank you for reading.. x
