I have many Mom pieces but the most recent and last pieces are the freshest and I feel like I need to write about them. I need to cleanse my mind a little.
Pasith and I had been noticing that Mom was slowing down in the last 3 or 4 years before she was diagnosed with cancer in late June of 2009. Not able to walk as far, not enough strength in her arms to hold our son for more than a minute when he was born, not wanting to drive farther than the 20 kms to my sister’s and generally a little slower. My Mom had chronic illnesses for a long time. Nearly all of them connected in one way or another to the body’s reaction to trauma. There is more and more research being done to connect the long term physical effects of emotional and mental trauma. Mom had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, usually associated with soldiers, long before it had been officially identified. Also the hormonal and chemical changes that happened when my Dad was killed and I was born so shortly after had a profound effect on her body that was destined to lead to health problems later on. I had a sense that she would not make it to her 70th birthday for a very long time. It wasn’t a morbid thought; I just didn’t know how her body would hold up to the assault much longer. And I saw how she suffered and I didn’t want her to suffer any longer than she had to. Her 70th birthday would have been this coming December 24th; 1 year and a week after she died.
Christmas of 2008 Pasith and I started to notice some weight loss and a small change in her skin color. And as Spring progressed and she no longer wanted to walk the block and a half to the mail box I started to get concerned but kept it mostly to myself. She wasn’t able to travel to Warroad to visit with family that March and I think the family started to wonder a bit because she wouldn’t miss seeing her brother from Colorado easily.
I started having nightmares around the middle of April of 2009 that my house was falling down. I would wake up several times a night or not sleep at all. The basement stairway fell apart. The roof caved in. The walls would fall in on themselves. The windows would break. The roof flew off. It was a different scenario every night sometimes we were in the house and hurt from the falling debris and other times we weren’t home and would come to find the devastation. After 2 months of nightmares I was exhausted and sick most days. Poor Pasith didn’t know what to do for me. I didn’t understand what the dreams were about until after my Mom was diagnosed. It wasn’t my physical house that was falling down it was a “warning” of what was to come. My family was going to be thrown into devastation. And we risked falling apart if we weren’t careful. The nightmares started to go away after her diagnosis and now I haven’t had one in a long time.
My Mom had a follow up appointment for an EKG in mid June of 2009. She was very nervous about it. There were a lot of heart problems in her family and she was scared. I told Pasith that I knew that something was coming. But it wasn’t the EKG. I knew that the next test would be bad; I just didn’t know what it was. I was very worried about her.
To be continued…