As usual, it's been a long long time between postings here. And a very hard long long time it has been. Early in August my niece in Rhode Island called me one night, and just from her "hello" I could tell she was calling with bad news. She is the daughter of my sister Peggy, the third sister in my birth family of six siblings. This sister was widowed quite young, with three very small children, whom she brought up alone, often in dire poverty, and increasingly in ill physical and mental health. While I lived in New England I was able to stay close to her and the kids, helping them all out in any way I could. When I left the area over eight years ago, she began to shut me out of her life, as she had her other siblings for some time.
The kids, grown by this time, remained close to me, or at least two of them did. One of my nephews is developmentally delayed, and it's hard to have much emotional closeness with him, especially from a distance. The other two often visited us in Delaware, and my niece and I drove across the country to Texas together one summer several years ago. From time to time I would get word from them about disturbing developments in their mother's life, although I had to pry most information out of them. She had tyrannized them into paranoid secrecy about everything concerning her life, and it was only when they felt at the end of their ropes dealing with it alone that they would tell me anything. She was diagnosed with diabetes about twelve years ago, and last winter had a heart attack and a procedure to place shunts in her heart. She had had half of one foot removed after serious infection, and had broken the knee on the other leg, and it never healed right, causing her to be in a wheel chair or on crutches, unable to continue the walking that had kept her semi-sane for many years. During all this time, listening now to my niece and nephew talk about their childhoods and adolescences with her, I am convinced that she also suffered from bi-polar disease, increasingly more so as she got older.
Back to the night in early August and my niece Jessica's phone call - she was calling to tell me that she and her brother Tom had found their mother in a glycemic coma (an event that had happened numerous times over the years, though usually they were able to revive her or call the EMTs who either revived her or took her to the ER where she was revived) from which they could not wake her. She was taken to RI Hospital, and continued in a coma - by this time it had been four or five days - from which she could not be woken. The doctors could not figure out why she remained in the coma, and insisted that it was just a waiting game, and soon she would surely wake up. I flew to Baltimore, then drove up to RI with my youngest sister who lives in DC and her 8 year old daughter. We were joined in RI after a few days by another sister, from Dallas.
After a week of watching at her bedside, talking to doctors (who appeared to be completely mystified by her case), my nephew suddenly remembered that maybe she had made a living will back in the winter when she'd had the heart procedure. We trooped in for a meeting with her lawyer, to find that indeed she had done a medical POA as well as a durable POA. She had a very specific DNR order written, which had already been extremely countermanded by the presence of breathing and feeding tubes, though by the time we found it she was breathing on her own. Evidence of neurological damage was growing, and though the doctors still seemed utterly baffled, they acknowledged that they were not acting according to her wishes. She had told her kids many times not to revive her, not to call for an ambulance, just to let her die, every time she had previously had such an episode. After another week of waiting, watching her grow more and more agitated, though still not fully conscious or able to speak or see, the doctors agreed that her orders should be obeyed. Once the IV insulin and the feeding tube were discontinued, and she was on only a morphine and atavan drip, she relaxed into a deep sleep, and died in ten hours (instead of the three days the medical staff had warned us it might take) holding Jessica's hand. Her son Tom had been there with her all night, and my sister Rosie and I had been there the afternoon before he came in. They had brought my other nephew, Charles, in to say goodbye that afternoon as well, once the tubes were removed and she was peaceful.
I have always dreaded the loss of a sibling, and now it has come to pass. This sister had estranged herself from the rest of us for many years, she was lost to us long before she actually died. I did see her four years ago, but have had little contact after that. Her life was a tragedy, and her death was the tragic outcome of it.
All of us are now filled with not just the grief of losing a sister, or a mother, but the guilt of wondering how we could have helped her want to live, to take care of herself, how we could have reached her through the layers of depression and illness. I stayed on to help the kids (I say kids, although they are really adults in their late twenties, early thirties) with her final arrangements and some other practical things. There is so much that will have to be done to clean up the mess she left behind, in so many ways. I'll be going back to RI probably the end of this month to help with it all.
This will be very hard for me, as the past month has been. Leaving our new home and life here, so soon after such a big move, with all its attendant stress and exhaustion. My DC sister will help out financially, if I can help with time, and amongst us all we'll get it figured out. Hopefully as quickly as possible, for the sakes of my niece and nephews. I haven't been posting at The Blue Voice, either, and don't know if I even will return there. I just can't find it in me to write about political and environmental subjects, while my family is in such grief and turmoil. Of course I know it all still matters, but it will all go on without me.
Right now, since getting back from RI last week, I've been working as a paid staffer on Bill Richardson's re-election campaign, and Gail has been working for ACORN on voter registration. It will bring in a few dollars, to help with all the dollars that have flowed out in the past month while I've been away from home, travel expenses, motels, eating out, paying for groceries for my niece's household, and so on. Those kids live on the thin edge financially, and my sister's estate is more bills than anything else - so these part-time jobs of a defined duration are a godsend.
I just wanted to bring my online friends up to date on the events of my life, and let you know where I've been while I've not been online. I don't read your journals or blogs, haven't for a long time, for which I ask your forgiveness and patience. Perhaps some day I will be back to a normal life - it seems like a very long time since it's been normal - and able to catch up with all of you. I hope you are well, that your lives are "normal," and that for you "normal" means wonderful, or simply...good. Thank you for all the love and friendship you have brought into my life. At a time like this friends take on a whole new meaning. I couldn't function without them, without you. May the force be with you all. Mary Ellen
