There are people in her room. First she reported that James was standing by her bookshelf, out of the way, but that she "could feel his spirit caring." Alex was with him. Then she noticed other people filling up the room...As she named all the people around her, sitting on her bed, stroking her hair, standing beside her, it hit me that these were all the people who love her, and have been sending love, good vibes, prayers, support...even people that I wouldn't have expected her to remember, that have reached out to Kelly & I...We decided that, since she was in a special place between our reality and a spiritual realm, she must be able to actually see their spirits being there for her.
"How do you feel about them all being there?" I asked her.
"It's very comforting" she said.
Later, she leaned back and asked me "do they know how ok I am? I am ok. Do they know that? That I'm happy? Tell them that this is a good way to go. It's pleasant."
She is not all here, but that fact is not all bad.
Granted, some of the conversations we have had over the past couple of days have been like reading a script from an absurdist play, but the ultimate takeaway is that, as long as she is not in pain, she is not troubled by her hallucinations or inability to follow a conversation. The only time it seems to upset her is when she is afraid her confusion is confusing everyone else. That right there tells you she's still there, the same old Mary Ann, wanting to take care of everyone around her and not burden anyone.
We have increased her pain meds and I actually got her to drink a smoothie (that the girls made! hooray!) of banana, oats, and greek yogurt, and I think the combination of the fuel and reduced pain made a world of difference. She has been much more lucid and even came out to sit with us in the living room (briefly) with the help of a hospice-provided wheelchair.
She tired quickly and asked to go back to her room, but I heard her talking after she was settled and went in to join the conversation. She was talking about how this is a trip, and when you travel, no two days are ever the same, and so she was just traveling, and that is how it is. I piped up to ask if it was a good journey...I don't know who she had been talking to before that, but she gave me a look that made it clear that it was perhaps rude of me to ask such a thing, but answered that yeah, it was a fun journey. She backtracked to explain that this little compartment-her bed, commode, table, with her window, the beautiful flowers and artwork she has received and the clary sage wafting from the salt-lamp thing Kelly got for her- it was like a train compartment, and she was traveling, journeying from here to there. A fancy, luxury sleeper train car, we agreed. She was comfortable, and I thought she had drifted off to sleep, when she said something so suddenly lucid that I had to ask her to repeat it. So she did:
"Tell them that its ok if they don't see me off. This way I don't have to suffer through saying goodbye to every single one of them. Put it in the blog."
And so I am.
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| James snapped this picture for Peggy before she and Jess caught the plane back to MN. Mom surrounded by "her girls"-My Aunt Peggy and her daughter Jess on the right, Kelly, me & my kids on the left. |
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