Mom's Dying

I have a wall of deniability up; that's what gets me through this. I can almost convince myself that Mom isn't really going to go; that visiting her in the hospital is what life is going to be now. Of course I know that's not true, but it's how I cope. The wall teeters occasionally, but I don't want to be a blubbering mess right now. I just want to be here. There will be all the time in the world to fall apart after. I'm not ready to be in that place yet.

It's 2:15 am and Mom is dying. It will be very soon, but when exactly no one can say. Her physical self lies here in this hospital room, struggling for every breath, fighting so hard against the pull of death. But the Mom we know is gone. We will never see her on this earth again.

The room is always crowded; there is a shortage of seats. We talk over her, around her. We think she can hear us -- our voices, if not our words. We share memories and catch up on family news and flip through family albums. Sometimes we whisper in her ear, those last things we need to say. We kiss her forehead, her cheek; we hold her hand, or her foot if that's all we can reach. There is nothing more we can do for her, but be here.

I'm baaaaack!

Two and a half years later, I have overcome my Facebook addiction and I'm wondering why the hell I ever quit blogging in the first place. There will be no retrospective of the missing years because nobody but my family reads this thing and you guys already know the highlights anyway. More or less.

So, Britt's two front teeth have been wiggly all summer and one of them is FINALLY hanging by a thread. Like it would totally pop right out if I could just get a good grip on it, which I can't because it's so small and slippery. She won't let me tie a string around it either. Papa also gave it a try last night but had no more success than I did, so we all subsided and headed off to bed. At which point Britt started hollering that IT WAS COMING OUT! RIGHT NOW!!! And so we convened in the bathroom:





Alas, it was a false alarm. But all was not lost, because Britt then treated us to a demonstration of how she talks in her sleep:

***snore***
picklepicklepicklepickle
***snore***
picklepicklepicklepickle...