Awareness

[Guest guest]

In response to the question on awareness....I remember my mother also

saying over and over " Aiya, ya, ya, ya, ya,... " and wondered if she understood

what we were saying and/or was trying to answer us. By Thanksgiving my mother

was bedridden. Five or six days prior to this I told my mother she needed to

get up and get home Thanksgiving was around the corner and she needed to make

the stuffing. My mother answered very clearly: " Turkey? Anyone wanting a

turkey this year can make it themselves!! " This was totally unlike her, she was

always the cook and her kitchen was her domain. Each day she got worse...and

soon stopped talking altogether.

I will never forget the Thanksgiving of '98, eating a slice of pizza in the

cafeteria of Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston while my mother laid

upstairs in a comatose state. I was so mad... We took her home on Dec. 2nd.

I'll never forget the day I was alone in the house with her as she laid on the

hosptial bed that Hospice loaned us, talking and singing as I did to her over

and over; when in the middle of a song she use to sing to me (while she pushed

me on my swing when I was 3 or 4 yrs. old), she reached over and took my hand

and squeezed it. I remember being overwhelmed....thinking she's OK...she'll be

better soon. But it never happened, at 8:44 a.m. on Dec. 10th, 46 days after

the first noticeable symptom my mother died...and I don't think I'll ever be the

same. Suzanne