Part 18a: Hummingbird Heart
Honeymoon in the “country”
It is Wednesday evening and I am looking back at the day. It was one of the few where my time spent on the phone did not consume the usual entire day. There were pockets of time spent conferring with aides and nurses. The time that was calm was almost frightening. Too good to be true. Until the phone rang just as I was sitting down to dinner. Just after I took the first sip of wine I have had in over a month. The aide sounded frantic. She had left to go shopping and the other aide called to tell her my mother’s pulse was 104. She sometimes speaks so quickly that I can’t understand her. “We are calling the Hospice nurse to check her, her heartbeat is too fast. If we have to we will go to the hospital.” My hunger left me quickly. I was assured that if she were to go to the hospital the aide would go with her. And then I remembered what the hospice nurse said, that if she were to return to the hospital, it would be to a special wing with only Hospice people and a small nurse to patient ratio; the way it should be, I thought.
The phone rang again between salad and meatballs. Everything was OK. The Hospice nurse came up and all was calm, reassured.
Small animals and hummingbirds have rapid heartbeats, they need to to stay warm, to metabolize food. My mother must now be in that category. Small. Tiny. Seventy-five pounds. Emaciated. Near her ninety-fifth birthday. Near the end.
I sent these down, they arrived this morning
It’s now Thursday morning. I hope my cards arrive today, the mail is so slow to Florida. I hope things are calm and stable. But as much as I hear that my mother is doing “great” because she walked a few steps with help or ate a few bites of ice cream, I know the truth. It’s not good.
The stress over the last six months has likely been the cause of a health problem for me. Not fatal, just a bad, inconvenient, pain in the butt. Ocular migraine. Maybe I’ll blog about it as many people don’t know it exists. I am having these sometimes as much as every day. Stress.
This series is linked: see “continued here.” Also, below the line there will be links for the previous post and the next.
Hi sue
The flowers are beautiful and I am sure your mom will enjoy them. I know this is such a difficult and stressful time for you.
I am thinking of you.
Hi, Nancy, I know you are thinking of me, thanks as always for your friendship. xo
What a delicate, adorable description of your mother, Sue: a humming bird with human traits. You are a poet in all circumstances. xxx
The poor thing is as tiny as a little bird. I remember when my grandmother was dying in the hospital she must have been small as well. I heard my mother say that she and her sister, my aunt lifted my grandmother and turned her and she was, “light as a feather.” Here it is so many years later and my mother is now her mother. We all meld into one generation, one person, all part of the human condition.