Losing Our Mother IV.

I am in mourning. That’s what it is. Admit it. Face it. Deal with it. 

 

For what? It’s a ‘for whom’ situation. It’s for my mother (actually, my stepmother but she’s been our mom for a lot longer than our biological mother was). Still, it’s not the same. Particularly when I was turning 18 when she came into our family life. As a young adult who essentially moved out a year later, the bond was understandably never what it was with my real mother, who died when I was just 17.

 

But still. Our father left us 13 months ago today. Our family was all able to process that with a wonderful weekend of closure together 10 weeks later, just before the coronavirus shut everything down.

 

And that’s what makes this so hard. We have not seen our mother since that memorial weekend. We phone, but of course it’s not the same. We could have driven up in the summer before things got worse again. But to drive 5 hours and stay in a motel and only see her through a window or maybe through shields and masks for an outdoor visit on the grounds – not that attractive a proposition. So, rightly or wrongly, it did not happen. 

 

Would I have done it if it had been my ‘real’ mother? Possibly. But is that fair to ‘mom’, as we have called her over the years to distinguish her from ‘mother’? After all she has done and been for us?

 

I have written three blog postings before on losing our mothers (May-June 2019). I have written there of the sudden, unexpected death of our ‘biological’ mother, which was obviously a rather traumatic loss. I have also written about the loss of this mother. It is a loss we were already experiencing because she has slowly been changing from whom she used to be because of dementia. Some of you will resonate with that. This dreadful condition is far too common these days.

 

As such, we have seen the changes over the last five years and then, looking back, realized things we noticed going back over ten years were already signs. We have seen her situation become ever more tenuous in the Assisted Living facility she and father moved into in March 2019 – two years or more too late in our opinion, but we all know ‘old people’ can be stubborn. It’s hard to give up independence. We knew safety was becoming a potential concern.

 

So, it caught me off guard as to my emotional reaction when our youngest sister, mother’s only remaining ‘full’ child (our half-brother died prematurely 6 ½ years ago) informed us by email that mother had been admitted to hospital because of wanting to leave her ‘home’ and that she was not going back. We know and have expressed our appreciation for the ‘second mile’ to which the facility did go to try and keep mother there, as she did like it there.

 

Then I realized a couple of things, actually at least three. One, this is the second such transition in the space of two years for us. In the meantime, our father who made the transition in March 2019, had died in December. So, there’s that loss still, still recent. Secondly, there’s the element of not being able to be there to journey through this with mother at some level, like we could with father to a degree. Neither the Vernon Restholm Assisted Living or Vernon Jubilee Hospital are accepting visitors these days due to coronavirus. I did talk with mother today for the first time since being admitted there on the 15^th. She is frightfully confused, as expected. That’s when we should be there to give her a hug, cry with her and talk her through it all as best we can. But we can’t. We’re grateful the hospital staff takes a portable phone to her for a short conversation. But I think the third point is in some ways the worst. All this is happening to mother because she does not know what she is doing. 

 

It seems so unfair. Not only is she smitten with dementia, which really means we can’t expect to walk her through the transition to any extent approaching what we did so imperfectly even with father. The coronavirus restrictions, and I don’t question the need for them really, don’t even allow us to be there to try and do what we can.

 

But we will do what we can from a distance, with her, with one another, with her staff. The story is not finished.