Endings and beginnings

Life and death. Beginnings and endings. Old years go and new years come. And we all go on.

My mother is 82 and in the hospital right now. She has two pulmonary embolisms and an AVM in her head. She also has a heart flutter - causing rapid heart rate (125+), high blood pressure, high cholesterol and Type 2 diabetes. She is as strong as a horse and as stubborn. Up until now, she has not been a sick woman at all. Very active, healthy, completely there in her mind. Married for 61 years. Stubborn, like I said.

But I fear her time is nearing. I am hoping and praying and sending every positive thought I have that she pulls through this. The treatment for pulmonary embolisms is blood thinning medication, we know that. The problem is this AVM, which she was born with, in her head. It cause seizures in November once and she was hospitalized for a week. No operating on an 82 year old woman with an AVM that had never caused her problems. The time she spent resting is the time they think the blood clots formed in her legs. They have traveled since, landing in her lungs. They are large.

Bleeding from a pulmonary embolism in your lungs is bad.
Bleeding in your head from an AVM is even worse.
And I cannot even write what the 'worse' is. I just cannot.

So this year ends on such a sad note for me here. As many of you know, mother and daughter relationships are tangled, in messy and various ways. And they are complicated. My mother was a wonderful mother to me and my brother and sister. I had a lovely, love-filled childhood, safe and secure. There is always the underscore though, the background music that plays while it all goes on. She is my mother and I love her dearly is what I know in my heart.

Whatever happens, I am trying in vain to accept. Death is a part of life and I know she will be in God's hands, well and whole. And that I will see her again after I pass. I am assured and blessed in that way. It's still hard to accept she won't be here with us all when her time comes.

And no one has said it has come yet. As I said - strong, stubborn, has pulled out of worse messes in her life. I will not be sad for her death while she is still alive and here.

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As for you, my DOC friends, this year you have all brought Grace and I such support in so many ways. You have lifted me up when I think I cannot do this D one more day. You have made me cry and made me laugh. You have made me learn and become smarter about D. You have said 'same same' when I tell you how I feel. And you have carried me on this journey, farther than I could have gotten all by myself.

So I say to all you out there in the DOC, my D-Mamas and D-Papas,
Thank you.

To 2011 everyone - full of life, living and loving.