CHAPTER 201: IMPRESSIONS OF MY LIFE: AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A RECHERCHE POET OMNES MULKIERES ET HOMINS MORIUNTUT 2012

 CHAPTER 201. OMNES MULIERES ET HOMINES MORIUNTUT

 

The children at Bethel Methodist painted a poster to my mother. I hung it on the wall of her room at Pembrooke. My mother had been in the nursing home for six months. The  home had found a room where both of my parents could now betogether. Mom continued to delude herself that she would go home again, but this was impossible for their were no facilities in their house to care for people in their conditions, beside her useless left side would have prevented this.

Money was also a problem. No one had any. My mother had started a fund to collect money for her future death and burial, but they had to use this savings to pay Pennsylvania their taxes.  I became the person in charge of their finances once my mother had her stroke. What upset me was how little they had. If one or the other passed away, there was enough to bury them, but if they both died then there was not enough funds to bury both.

I was rather shocked when I began looking at their expenditures over the past several years. I hd often helped them out and at one point bought them a refrigerator when their’s failed, an expenditure I could barely afford. Now I found my mother had been paying a vast number of charities every month, including such things as an Indian School and a Russian Mission. It appeared that any organization who solicited donations from her were on her monthly expenditures. My parents were giving away a couple hundred dollars a month. It is not that some of these charities were unworthy, just that my parents were elderly people living on a fairly low fixed income and dealing with a large number of medical bills at the same time.

My father seemed to get along fine in the nursing home. He was being well taken care of and he had the charm to quickly make friends and  creat a sort of social life for himself. He was not a complainer about his disabilities. He still continued his lifetime flirting with women, and the nurses and aides hovered about him.  Despite his medical difficulties, he got about easily in his wheelchair and entertained those who shared his table in the dining room with a constant stream of stories about his youth and navy service.

Meanwhile my mom was depressed and deteriorating physically. She was now listed as a hospice patient. She had nurses assigned to her who were trained in palliative care. They visited with her and did what could be done to ease any pain  and keep her comfortable.

In those final days my wife and I left her room and found her
nurse leaning against the hallway wall crying.

“Most patient’s are beyond cognitive recognition of what is happening. But your mother’s mind is clear and she knowns everything and this makes it so painful to me, I had to come out here for a while.

In the end my mother began yelling she couldn’t breath. Nothing  they tried eased this for her. I sat with her that evening, held her good hand and in a quite voice gave her permission to let go.  She died that night.

My dad had been by her bed earlier and he gave her a lot kiss.

My father would live almost another three weeks. He
thanked me, something that never came easy to him. He looked at me, took a deep  breath and said. I love you. I had waited my whole life to hear those words from him. They were his last words and later that night he also passed.

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