Yesterday I signed my mother up for Hospice. That is a very scary thing, as Hospice is equated with eminent death, and in reality part of that is true and part is not. Hospice is a program, not a place and what Hospice professionals due is deal with the physical, emotional and spiritual needs of a person who is facing the fact that, due to a medical diagnosis, they in all probability will die – most likely within six months or less.

 

I felt compelled to bring Hospice in after what happened this weekend with my mother’s medication going out of wack and with her being dilusionary and hallucinating. Hospice professionals are dedicated to providing as much quality of life and managing pain in these types of situations. I wanted to make sure we had the best dealing with my mother’s situation at this point in time.

 

What Hospice does is allow natural death with comfort support. The goals of Hospice are not curative – the program is comfort care oriented and emphasizes the alleviation of symptoms and promotion of quality of life. At this point, I feel this is all that I can do for my mom.

 

I wasn’t sure how I would feel about this – but I found that I was ok with it. I want to make sure that my mom has quality of life and dignity as we face this – and now I have made sure that that will occur.

 

Mom is much more lucid which I am so happy about. That medication imbalance really caused crazy things to occur. In a way, it was a blessing in disguise, because faced with the fact that I may have had the last lucid conversation with my mother and then seeing that I have not – it has made me much more tolerant and much more grateful for what we have left.

 

On another note, my brother is coming into town today. My brother and my parents have/had a love-hate relationship for many years. As for me, I have estranged from him for many years – yet I felt he needed to know what was happening to mom and make his decisions from there.

 

He is speaking like he wants to reconcile with me, and I am not sure about that. There have been many things that have occurred during the years that were not talked about and need to be resolved. I am not sure that this is the time or the place, but I also do not want to move forward without some recognition of the issues that caused the situation and how things are going to changed.

 

My close friend Kathy says I need to think about the concept of forgiveness – and I am willing to entertain that. But I also know that not dealing with past issues and sweeping them under the carpet only puts them in a place where they will resurface during the next inevitabel conflict. So I need to resolve for myself how that will work for me. I am glad that he is seeing her. It will be interesting to see how she treats him.

 

Anyway, despite everything, yesterday was a pretty decent day. My concept of normalcy has changed since all of this happened, but I think my "new normal" was yesterday – and I was very grateful for some normal in my life again.