She's gone in One day at a time

Sorry to leave you all hanging after my last entry.

My beloved Mum passed away on Sunday 19 August. A week to the day after she had the stroke.
From the Wednesday she was asleep a lot of the time, although she still seemed to be in pain. The Dr (who was a total tosser) told us that what she was going through was much more painful for the family to watch than for the patient. How would he even know? Pain medication was administered sparingly (too sparingly in my mind), and the misery for all of us dragged on way too long.

When we put the notice of Mum’s death in the newspaper we researched a few others to get the wording right. Most of them said “peacefully, surrounded by family”. None of us felt that it was a peaceful death at all. So her notice read “In June’s own way”. We also thanked her amazing friend who had visited her twice a week for the last 40 years (since my Dad died). My Brother wanted to put “with thanks to her special friend Evelyn”, but I thought that made them sound like 89 year old Lesbians, so we changed it to special thanks to her friend Evelyn.

We had a private cremation (which is unusual here). I’m so glad we decided to go that way, as we were all completely shattered after our hospital vigil. I couldn’t think of anything worse than being surrounded by people, even though they would have no doubt been well meaning.

I’m so grateful that I got to spend that time with my Mother, and my Brother and Sister-in-law. I always thought I would just get a phone call to say it was over. Even though Mum showed no signs of recognition, we got to hold her hand and kiss her as she died, and for me that was priceless.

So now I am back to work, but still feeling a bit scattered. Grief is a weird old bugger. I can function fairly normally but my head feels very scattered. I have watched nothing but game shows on TV, and haven’t read a book, which is unheard of for me. Of course I have kicked into my normal survival mode, which is keep busy at all times. My house has never sparkled so much.