I am numb

My mind is blank, just going thru the motions. I know my mother is dying, very slowly, but it makes me so sad. Why does she have to suffer? Why not just go from really living life, then on to the next world? She fell in the middle of the night. Hit her head on the dresser, cut her hand. I heard it, got up, dreading what I would find. She wouldn't let me help her up, but kept yelling, "I have to get up, I have to get up." She rolled over, crawled on her knees to the bed, then said, "OK, now pick me up." I can't figure it out, what she wants. I don't think she knows either.

Every morning I fix her food. I no longer trust her to get to the kitchen. She tells me she will, but then when I ask her what she ate, its "cheesy peanut butter crackers" or "snacks". All the stuff she keeps in her room. She has a bedside commode that I have the pleasure of emptying. When my mother-in-law had me doing all this stuff, I fought it, telling her she needed to keep moving. With my mother I am more compassionate and that makes me sad, too. That I didn't make Jean's last days more comfortable.

Growing old is not for sissies they say. "They" are proven right. Mom looks at me and cries, she just wants it over. I wish I could help her along, but even in this there is a purpose. So we wait, never knowing what day it will be, but knowing it is inevitable. One day last week she thought she was dying. She was at my sister's house. When Debbie wanted to take her to the hospital, she said, "Don't you dare."

I refuse to go this way. I will continue to do everything that is wrong for a healthy body to assure my demise at an early age. Our modern medicine keeps people alive way past their time. Oh well, if we get nationalized medicine, I won't have to worry. I'll still be waiting on line to see a doctor when I go.