[CaptainCrunch]

So, here I am . . .

I haven't been in this thread for a while, not because things were stable or good, but because its just been a matter of coping with the horribleness of this disease, the impact on my Dad who has his own instabilities, and just because its hard to write about.

My Mom is almost gone, its a matter of days or even hours.

Somehow, she picked up an infection, and was rushed to emergency last weekend, and they tried to treat her. She was in tremendous pain, crying and not being able to lie still.

Today we moved her from anykind of treatment to comfort care in the hospital. And now she's just sleeping, not crying or calling out, but sleeping. She'll try to wake up and we'll stroke her hair and tell her its ok to go to sleep.

She now has a very short amount of time left.

Weirdly I felt tremendously guilty about this. A week ago I was talking to my sister about how Dementia has now completely erased the feisty sometimes hilarious, caring woman that raised me, and how she didn't know who anyone was, rarely talked, and our visits were short because she just wanted to go to bed. She had withered down to next to nothing. I remember talking to my sister and saying that though I'm not a religious person, thought my mother was, that I had actually prayed that if there was a god it was time to end her suffering and take her. And here we are after 4 days of her being tortured by this infection that the end for her is in sight.

Right now, I don't even know how to reconcile it.

My Dad hasn't seen my mother for over a month, he became convinced that because she didn't know him anymore and because she was agitated the last time he was there that she hated him and didn't want to see him. At the same time when my sister and I went to talk to him about it, he told us to get out of his life.

I respected that and didn't talk to him for weeks, but I decided that even though he'd chased my sisters off that I couldn't see him living and dying alone and started visiting him with limits.

I phoned him and told him today what's going on and I'm taking him to see mom tomorrow and though she might not be awake that he can provide comfort and maybe get some closure for himself.

Now we wait, and hope and for some pray.

I wanted to really come here and talk about my mom a bit, but its not the time.

But I really actually wanted to come here and say . . .

We don't tell people that we're close to that we love them enough. Sometimes we even avoid it. We also don't forgive people enough not because they've earned forgiveness, but sometime we need to just go through the act of forgiving to unburden ourselves, and unburdening them.

I know I'm all over the map here. Its weird, I'd think that getting the news that my mom is dying would break me down, that I'd be a wreck, and yes, I'm sad, and yes I'm worried how each member of my family from my Dad to my 3 sisters, who at times I have big problems with is going to react.

Do me a favor, I know that sounds weird, but if some good comes out of this whole mess for me personally is. Tell your Mom or Dad or Sister or Brother that you love them and you value them. Do something nice for them.

I'll probably put down some memories of my mom in this thread. Not the awful ones that happened after Dementia really got a hold on her. But maybe some of her wisdom, or some of the weird adventures we had once when I got lost driving her home from Coaldale and we wandered 200 miles off course because of my pride (ok people there were no GPS systems when I was younger). Or some of the incredible made up words that she'd use when she was upset with us kids. Or the time when I struggled with math and my sharp brilliant mother took me back to the beginning.

I don't know what else to say here. except talk to you soon.

PS my mom would probably be really upset at my instances of bad grammar,