Slice of Life: Saturday Morning #SOL16

I have been contemplating joining Slice of Life for a while. I've been writing in secret, reticent to have others read my words. Mostly, since January, these words have been about my mother. Today I decided. It's time. I'm jumping in.

Saturday Morning

I pick up two cups of coffee as I enter the hospital. My mother loves her coffee. I carry them carefully along the hall eastward towards where the medical wing is, bypassing the door to emergency, past super track, through nuclear medicine and beyond the elevators. Finally I get to the stairs. I push the door open and walk up them, wondering how mom will be today. I perch one coffee precariously on the other to open the door and return to another short hallway.

Then I'm in her room but she's not there. I put the coffee on her table, take off my coat and unplug my earbuds. Where is she? Have they taken her for more tests? Then the nurse brings her out of the washroom.

Mom is washed and her hair is clean, but it only takes a moment to realize that while she knows me, she's not really here today. It isn't that she's confabulating or even delirious. She's just in a kind of stupor and can barely sign the birthday card I brought in for one of her grandkids. She wants the coffee, but has no energy to sit up and drink it. As she signs the card she tilts to the right and back. I'm afraid she's going to fall over. I get her lying back down. She rouses to ask if she wrote, "All my love," in the card. I tell her yes, although I can't read what she has written. 

She dozes and I put my hand in hers. Even though she's almost out of it today, she grips mine with a ferocious strength. Today there will be no conversation about the old days. She won't remember that Daddy died on this day twenty five years ago. She won't tell me how hard it was when she lost her mother and that I’ll carry her with me when she is gone. 

I ask the nurse about her medication. She brings in the chart and I see that they gave her melatonin last night. I sit and worry, wondering what to do next. I note that I will have to do some research on the effects of melatonin and haldol on someone who has had a brain injury. There will be conversations with her doctors. Next week we face tests to determine if the cancer has metastasized into her brain. Decisions must be made about where she will go once she leaves the hospital. 

I don't have the energy to deal with all this right now. In this moment, Mom is gripping my hand like she will never let go. I acknowledge without words, I'm here for her. Today it's enough and all that really matters.