Moving On Through Grief

Mom left this earth on February 12, 2025. I woke up that morning to get Myles ready for school and Mom was cold. She went to meet God sometime between 2:30 am and 6:30 am. I called The Boy’s dad to come get him and take him to school as we had agreed on prior to that. I shut her bedroom doors and got him together and out the door and then I called hospice. 

It was such a RELIEF knowing that she was finally gone to God. In her final days awake, my Mom begged me to kill her. She begged me to let her die. She was crying in pain even through the pain medication. Thankfully, when we got close, I was able to tell her how much I loved her and administer morphine. That kept her out of pain, asleep, and floating in her own world. 

When she lost consciousness it was about 4-5 days after that when she went to meet God. One of the surreal things was that although she was unconscious, her eyes were open. Hospice assured me that was common. But it broke my heart to see her normally bright blue eyes in that pale grey shade. 

As my Mom’s caregiver for the last two years I was by her bedside every two hours. Sometimes every 30 minutes. At first for meals, the potty chair, to bathe her, change her clothes.

She lived with me. When it got too hard for her to even lift her arm, I changed the pad under her. Her diaper. Her clothes. I fed her medication every four hours, every two hours, day and night, and rubbed lotion on her. 

I cleaned and tended to her bedsores, on her bottom and on both her feet. Weeping wounds that needed daily care. 

When Mom became unresponsive, I continued to roll her and clean her bedsores, her diapers, and I was giving morphine every two hours day and night for three weeks. 

Mom fought the deadliest cancer ever. For six years. Acinar cell carcinoma of the pancreas. In the tail of the pancreas. After fighting various cancers from the time she was 32. Ovarian. Breast. Cervical. Breast. Cervical. Ovarian. And finally, one she couldn’t beat. We knew six years ago that it would be what killed her.

Her tumor was so large, (baseball size) and she was so skinny, you could see the ridges and edges of the tumor through her skin. 

She was only sixty-seven. 

Doing this day in and day out, every hour, watching the most important relationship in your life get weaker, smaller, lose weight, lose light in their eyes, cry from the pain, BEG YOU TO KILL THEM, BEG YOU TO LET THEM DIE…

Carrying your 55lb mother to bed for the last time in her life. 

Wiping her tears a way and trying to reason that if we lived on ANOTHER piece of land, in a DIFFERENT place, then maybe she would be able to seek the compassionate deliverance from her pain and suffering that our legislators give to mere animals.

 

Cruelty is when a man in an office in a far away place can legislate relief for your medical condition and not give a damn.

Chasing You

Empty hugs and hollow walls

Chasing times that I recall

The details cracked like window panes

That keep me from getting through to you.

The void of arms and plans unmade

Conversations I recall give way  to cold air, the

Feeling that you were never really there at all.

I can’t get through to you.

No matter how I try.

This is how it feels.

The cosmos keep me planted

While your soul, it flies.

I can hear your voice in my ear,

Steady as a drum, sure as anything

That this is the way it comes.

When your arms wrap around me and my vision swims

I can hear your laughter as your warmth cools

One last time to make the grieving end and remind me

You were mine for such a great time.

But I can’t get through to you.

No matter how I try.

Your warm space turns cold.

The cosmos keep me planted

While your soul, it flies.

This is how it feels, to watch someone die.

© Krystal Monroe