It was a year ago today that my mother died in a room on the 3rd floor of the Appalachian Regional Hospital in Hazard, Kentucky. She was old, in poor health, and too frail to fight off infections after an emergency & life saving operation a couple of weeks earlier. Her last 2 weeks of life were miserable.
I had been to see her a week earlier, but had returned. When I saw her she was in bad shape, but was apparently doing better than she had been a few days before.
My brother called me late in the afternoon on the 23rd & told me she wasn't going to make it. The medicine was not working, her body would not heal. My father and the doctors had made the decision to make her as comfortable as possible, to keep her from any more suffering. It had become obvious that she was not going to recover. No one had any idea of how long she might live. They moved her out of intensive care and waited.
I left the next morning. I got the call just after noon, moments after I had pulled into a service station in Gate City, Virginia. She died less than 24 hrs after my brother called, surrounded by family members, but I was still almost 100 miles away.
So it's been a year. I haven't forgotten.
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2 comments:
I don't live near my in laws and a month before my mother in law dies I happened to be on a trip to the town they lived in. She's been gone 9 years and I'm disappointed in myself for not visiting her while I was there. She was a wonderful person.
Sorry for your loss. It seems like no matter how much time passes we remember still with clarity as if it was yesterday.
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