I don't know when she uttered these words, but according to my sister, it was on this day seven years ago, a Monday at the time. when Mom made the following assertion:
I'm dying.
I wasn't there when she said this. I didn't know what her tone was. Truthfully, I wouldn't even learn that she had said this until later in the week. At the time she said this, I don't think my sister or anyone else would have put much thought into it. These were just words. Potentially meaningless ones, at that.
I don't know to whom she said this, but just the fact that she said it was jarring enough. I don't know if it matters much who she said it to. I'm left wondering all these years later what exactly Mom was feeling internally because never in my wildest dreams would I have ever imagined that she would have ever said something like that. Mom may not have had the highest threshold for pain, but I have to think that she wouldn't have said something like this unless she truly felt something within, whether this was something in her gut or even something in her head (or possibly even both). I will never know what provoked her to say what she said, but she had to be feeling something awfully intense inside, to where she was now on the brink of maybe giving up.
Was she giving up?
While I never knew Mom to be that type, I know that she was definitely the type to absolutely loathe those moments in life when she wasn't enjoying herself and especially when she didn't have control of a situation. Mom didn't like pain. She didn't like being bored. She always wanted things to be her way. I imagine that when she was sitting there in those facilities, she wasn't enjoying herself, because she wasn't where she wanted to be. She would much rather have been at home, lying down, very much still bedridden, and doing whatever she did on her cell phone and tablet, all while the television was on providing background noise. I also believe that at some point, Mom had also grown tired of the frequent wound dressing changes to which she had been subjected, which not only made her move in ways that she was no longer accustomed, but they also hurt like hell because as she moved, the massive bed sores moved with her and I think that some of those sores may have opened wider or possibly even reopened after a minimal amount of healing.
Regardless of the extent to which she was being entertained, something happened that day to where she truly believed that she was dying and she felt compelled to actually go so far as to say it and do so in an audible manner. She wouldn't have said it if she didn't believe it or at least, if she hadn't felt that something bad was happening to her, somewhere on the inside.
We would learn later that indeed, something was going on, circulating through her and gradually taking over, until her body could no longer fight it off anymore.
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