What else is there?

My original post spanned over several pages in TextEdit. After staring blankly at my computer screen for several hours, I realized that it was simply too intimate, and too soon. What should have been a few paragraphs about a family tragedy looked more like the early works of a short story, and I began to feel that the prose my thoughts and feelings had turned into were just too... Detached? I don't know. But it just felt like, in order to cope, I had taken a tragic experience and attempted to pass it off as just another piece of writing, and I know that the road to acceptance isn't through attempting to convince myself that my life is a piece of fiction.

I haven't exactly had the clearest head for the past several days. My mind has been a blur of anger, joy, relief, sadness, and shame; sometimes one after the other, sometimes all at once. I just don't think I'm ready to dump that on the internet. So, the highly abridged version:

On July 8th, at 6:06 in the evening, my mom passed away. She wasn't alone; Dad and I were with her. She just stopped breathing, and a few moments later, her heart stopped as well.

That's all I can say right now. My heart is full of so many unsaid thoughts, but I just can't bring myself to let them go yet. I'm sure I will eventually; but not today.

What now?

It's been a little over a week since I dropped all of my plans and projects, haphazardly packed a duffel bag full of whatever rumpled, filthy clothing was nearest to me, and headed off to my hometown of Sandpoint, Idaho.

Crossing the Long Bridge and merging awkwardly into traffic, I'm reminded of just how much I have grown to hate this town over the last few years. Not even all the happy childhood memories in the world could make me consider loving it here. The mingled scent of car exhaust, sweaty bodies doused in suntan lotion, a hint of dead fish, and commerce invade my nostrils and I hold my breath as I pass through town and head out towards Kootenai. As I leave the main portion of town behind, the streets and landmarks become more and more unchanging, the scenery more consistent with the memories I still harbor.

But I am not here for nostalgia's sake. I'm here because my mother has finally succumbed to the doctor's predictions; she's dying, although admittedly a year and a half later than expected.

When I see her, she's seated in a wheelchair before the large picture window overlooking what used to be fields of wheat; it has since been cultivated into custom beach-front summer homes for the moderately well-to-do. “Hello, Mama” I venture. She doesn't look at me. I take her hand and wait. At long length, she opens her mouth and all that comes out is gibberish, her breath tinged with the scent of slightly rotten fruit left too long in the sun.

Her false coral eye (a souvenir from the first of what would become several battles with melanoma) has sunken somewhat into the left socket on her narrow face, but she swivels her good one in my general direction and again mumbles a few m's and h's. I still don't understand, and before I know it, I'm already spilling tears. She squeezes my hand, and with a laboured movement that seems to take forever, she lifts it to her lips and kisses it. I suppose that's what she'd meant to say.

I spend the day with her to give Dad and the boys an opportunity to rip up the rotting back deck. With some help, I wheel her hospital bed outside onto the back cement patio my father poured after I'd left for college, and move her under the shade. “Isn't it a beautiful day, Mama?” I ask. She only moans, and I try not to cry as I drag my crochet needles out of my purse and begin to work. Mom eventually falls asleep, her oxygen hookup hissing softly as her mouth hangs open, reminding me of a zombie. I curse myself for my recent survival-horror fixation and turn my attention back to my simple stitches. Three useless washcloths help me pass the time. Mom continues to sleep, her breathes coming out in all-too-familiar moans of pain. By the time I reach seven washcloths, my nerves have me leaning towards the urge to stab myself in the neck with one of those crochet hooks.

The most frustrating bit is wanting to make her as comfortable as possible, and not knowing how. Listening to her mumble and moan and not knowing what she wants or needs. Feeding her a yogurt morphine cocktail, or water, or Diet Coke through a syringe and fighting off horrible flashbacks of Bean, the newborn mouse who lived in my bedside dresser, whose death resulted in accidental drowning from my own careless feeding barely two weeks prior.

The third morning passes uneventfully, and in her restlessness I hear an incredibly clear sentence. “Where are my boys?” she asks, a tear rolling from her blue coral eye. I stall for a moment, surprised, since I hadn't know the tear duct in that eye still functioned, and I am suddenly filled with incredible anger towards the two biological sons she had been referring to, who should be here at her side when she so obviously needs them. The day passes and she does not speak again.

She has taken on an empty stare when I look at her, and her gaze always passes straight through me. When I move my head, her eyes don't follow. After several hours of this, I need to leave. I march a few times back and forth through the house to calm myself. “Hi Mama” I say as I return to the bedroom. To my surprise, she looks up at me and one side of her mouth attempts to smile. “Hi Sweetheart” she whispers, barely audible, before her gaze clouds again. I cry.

Once every few days a random nurse comes to check on her, each commenting that they would be surprised to see her last through another week. So far she's lasted through two.

I don't really know where we go from here.

We're Going To Be Friends: Part II

Feeling Pathetic

Bean died this morning. When I chirped to wake him for his midnight feeding, I noticed he was no longer crawling on his belly. When I picked him up, I saw that the front paw where he'd had the cut had swelled up and looked like a sausage and he couldn't walk on it anymore. I knew then he wasn't going to last much longer, and I told myself to prepare to wake up to a dead mouse.

I knew this was strictly a hospice situation, and I had prepared myself for his death. But what happened is different, because it was my fault. This isn't a false sense of humility; it literally was my fault. Maybe he would have eventually died tonight anyway, or tomorrow. It was inevitable. But it happened today, and it was my fault.

I slept through the alarm for Bean's 5am feeding and didn't wake up until just before 8am. I went to heat up some formula and then chirped for him to wake up. He did, and I could tell the little guy was pretty hungry. I held him and started to feed him bit by bit. When I pulled the syringe away, he started squeaking hungrily and trying to move towards it. I could tell he was really hungry, so I wasn't feeding him as slowly as usual. He was swallowing formula when I saw a drop of it come out of his nose and I knew I had given him too much too quick, that some of the formula had gone into his lungs. I wiped his face clean and tried to stroke his ribs with the washcloth, hoping I had been quick enough and that not too much had gotten in, or that maybe he could cough it up, but he stopped breathing evenly and started gulping loudly. Within ten seconds (I know it's cliche, but it felt like an hour), he was dead.

I killed him. I knew he was going to die, and rather than leave him outside I had wanted to ensure that he'd pass away in a nice warm bed. Instead he drowned to death right in my hands because I was so careless. I think waking up to find him gone would have been simpler. But staring at his little body as he died and knowing that I had killed him broke my heart.

I feel so pathetic for feeling this way over a stupid mouse. I couldn't even bring myself to just chuck him in the dumpster. I asked Roy if we could bury him, his little body still in my hand. I was crying so hard that Roy had to literally pry him from my fingers and wrap him in a towel himself. Roy ended up burying him; I just sat there crying and blathering like an idiot. I went to bed curled up with Evie and slept in until eleven. I feel horrible; I had only wanted to help, and instead, it's like he would have been better off if I had just chucked him into the bushes the minute I'd found him.