When you have a frozen abdomen from having 80+ abdominal surgeries, have a septic abdomen and septic prosthesis in your spine, suffer from Addison’s Disease and spend 24/7 in pain your world becomes very small. You also become well travelled as you have been to hell and back! Life gravitates around pain medication, more pain medication and hopefully some blissful sleep. Friends come and go. Spouses come and go. In an uncertain life it is a certainty that everybody eventually leaves.
So for the few of us that choose to stay around it is important to be sensitive to the emotions of the terminally ill person. Allow me to personalize this… It is important for us as a family to be sensitive to Vic’s feelings of abandonment.
Countless times a day Vic will say “Thank you Mommy for…….” “Thank you for looking after me”; “thank you for not leaving me”; “thank you for loving me” …… A child should never ever have to say that!
An adult child should rebel against the constraints of her parents rules and discipline and leave home. She leaves the safety of the home and comes back for Sunday lunches, to drop off laundry and bring a new love around to meet The Parents… Eventually the child will venture down the aisle, fall pregnant, christen her children, start running a car pool…. the list carries on and on. Eventually in large parts of the world the aged parents may move in with the now mature children and eventually die. I got married, left home, had Vic, got divorced, bought a new house, started my own business, remarried and eventually my Dad came to live with us for 18 months until he forgot how to breathe. Not once in my adult life did I ever consider moving back home to my parents. As an adult, wife and mother I often longed for the safety of my childhood home. I long for just ONE day in my life without responsibilities. I long to be a child again – carefree and cherished…. I miss my mom and wish I had her support and advice to get us through this difficult journey.
My sister and I discussed the way our lives had turned out. She has had an extremely challenging life and I seem to go from one crisis to another. We decided that we used up all our good luck and happiness as children…. I want to be a child again!
As usual I digress.
Vic is emotionally fragile. She fears that the remaining few people will also get tired of her ill health and pained life and abandon her. She fears that the boys will abandon her and look to us, the grandparents, for parenting. She fears losing the only “position” in life that she has left – the position of “Mother”. It has been very difficult to sacrifice her independence and move home. She has gone from being a wife to being a child. She has gone from being the mother to being mothered. I am a typical parent. I want to protect my little baby…. I want to do everything for her. I want to wrap her up in cotton wool and keep her resting in her bed. Maybe if she takes things easy it will buy us some extra time… If she is in bed her chances of injury is less.
Every day of her life countless indignities are heaped upon her. She is dependant for everything from medication, care, food and money. Poor poppet! Death is always in the foreground of her mind. Either fear of dying and at times fear of not dying.
I don’t really know what I set out to articulate in this blog but writing has once again reminded me what a pitiful life Vic has. My poor, poor little baby! No-one in the world deserves her life! But we will never abandon her – ever!
Today was a bad day – again.
Vic's Final Journey 