Weekly Update on Lewyville Ride...

[Guest guest]

Well, things are steadily declining with my Mom. She's so very

seldom coherent, and her only communication with any of us is a hello

when we come in the door. Different people will evoke a little more

response...my son Ben went with me yesterday to do their grocery

shopping, and she always calls him " Ben my good boy " . It breaks his

heart. He will talk with her, visit until she goes back into her

Lewyville stare, and then he goes outside and sits on the porch and

cries. He's 21, and he just can't quite get a handle on the fact

that his Nana is dying.

She's mostly unresponsive to any kind of attempts to engage her in

conversation at all. She's taking 30 minutes to an hour to eat

anything, as if she has forgotten how to eat. She can't sit upright

any longer. She wanted underclothing and a dress yesterday, but by

the time I walked the 10 steps to the bedroom to get them and got

back, she had gone under again. The periods of talking are fleeting,

and even when she does speak, it's mainly to ask for something which

she then won't acknowledge, whether it's a drink of water or

something to eat. She's rapidly losing weight, despite our best

efforts to keep her fed and hydrated. Knowing the inevitable outcome

of this disease, we have opted against artificial hydration or a

feeding tube.

Dad is so depressed, asking why she's being punished, and I try to

make him understand that we are living in a physical world with

physical bodies that have a limited span. He knows this but he's

watching the love of his life slip away from him. He gets impatient

sometimes, and then he feels so guilty for being impatient when he

knows she has no control.

Yesterday he asked me to get a Quit Claim Deed ready for him to sign

so that when Mom passes, the house will pass to me as executor of

their wills. He says he intends to move back to the small town where

he grew up, rent an apartment there, and live out the rest of his

life where she is buried. His brother and sister-in-law and his

sister and brother-in-law still live there, and he wants to be there

also. He stated that he's taking nothing from the house with him,

and wants me to divide it up between the siblings and then have an

estate sale for the remainder.

Dad is 84 years old, and I hate to see him giving up like that. But

he says he couldn't bear to live in the house surrounded by

everything that is Mom. I'm just so unbearably sad that I feel

frozen inside. I guess that's the way I'm going to have to handle

this--freeze until it's safe to thaw.

Jannis