One Whipped Mother

Goodbye

If I do post again on here, it certainly won't be any time soon. Go ahead and update your bookmarks.

It's been swell.

posted by Ms. Lori @ 7:02 PM

5:00 a.m., April 28,2008

For my mother, Suzanne Marie.

The suffering has ended.

posted by Ms. Lori @ 7:14 PM 29 comments

It's Bad

My mother has been going downhill -- rapidly -- since she began receiving "comfort" care a little under a month ago.

It has been unbelievably hard for me to see her this way. Most days, I do not want to visit her. The cancer is obviously in her brain now. Sometimes, she speaks like a six-year-old. Sometimes she calls out for her mommy.

And there are other things too awful to mention.

We finally found a good hospice house that will take her in, and I'm supposed to meet with them next Tuesday, but I feel in my bones she won't be leaving the hospital.

You know, I've witnessed loved ones go through the dying process before, but I've never, ever seen the agony my mother is going through.

I thought that was the stuff of fiction.

I swear to god, never saw anything like it...

posted by Ms. Lori @ 3:13 AM 19 comments

I Now Know Who My Favorite Candidate Is

Eh, I've been posting little content and many videos lately, but due to my visiting Mom at the hospital almost every day -- lengthy visits at that -- I haven't the time to think and write clearly enough for neither intelligent commentary nor pithy anecdotal shlimjollipers, yet I still feel the need to communicate what lurks within my addled brain...

Mom'll soon be moved to a lovely "comfort home," which will be most excellent. Where they have her now (palliative care unit) is so craptastic, it defies explanation. No private bathroom (there's a darling little potty that pulls out from the wall, though -- how grand), and no real walls to separate patients (particle board partitions). I mean, really, you can hear the old guy next door when he farts, for god's sake.

Used to be a neonatal intensive care unit, see, but they jerry-rigged it into some semblance of a hospice facility. This will not do.

We're just waiting for an opening at the comfort house right now.

Anyway, I enjoyed the below video immensely.



Go Hill!

I'll bet my last Blue Light that Hill could drink that skinny ol' Barack under the table any day.

Strong constitution equals strong leadership. Well, in my book, at least...

FYI: Her favorite beer is Blue Moon with orange slices.

posted by Ms. Lori @ 10:25 AM 12 comments

My Girlhood Crushes

I totally wanted to marry Peter Frampton, Jackson Browne, Spock, and...


(Apologies for the Nipple Dude...Yes, he's sickening, but what can you do? It was the seventies, after all...)

Watching their performance with Fergie on Idol Gives Back, however, just made me really, really mad. I hate Fergie with such a passion, I have visions of maiming her with a jar of mayonnaise.

So, what? They had to put froggy-face in there to jump and flounder about in her tight leather for the low-brained twats out there in American TV Land that must have some not-fat eye-candy? Is that what the deal is?

I no longer watch American Idol. I'd been growing bored of that flumpy flappydoodle of a show for a while now, but this last shulpcramp is the straw that broke this camel's back.

***sigh***

Think I'll watch the above Heart video once again, and dream of when they were mine...

posted by Ms. Lori @ 9:18 PM 3 comments

Don't Bother With This...

If you don't have an intelligence quotient above that of a chimpanzee's.

Been concerned about certain...Things. Been worried, a tad afraid...Been that way for some years now.

I've avoided posting about my concerns, because I don't want to be seen as some "conspiracy nut," but my concerns are being validated more and more each day.

Unfortunately.

Your world is not what you think it is.

Investigate, learn, think, open your eyes...



I plan on posting more about my concerns in the future, with verifiable references, other videos, and my completely awesome and always creepy-good insight.

The world, she is a-changin'. What a shame that most of us will not see it until it's too late.

ADDENDUM: That last sentence is a bit dramatic, isn't it? Sorry. I don't believe the world is ending soon or anything like that, nor do I see it as suddenly spiraling out of control and causing its occupants to suffer mondo vertigo. I don't think we're in the "end times," as my personal beliefs side with the "bullshit and poppycock" folks, but...Something's in the air -- literally and figuratively. Major shifts involving socioeconomic/political/religious climes will occur during our lifetimes, as to the point where they are unavoidably noticeable (changes have been underway for a very, very long time, but many of us just haven't paid attention), and possibly, to some of us, detrimental to our overall well-being.

The best way to tolerate extreme change is to prepare for it. Knowledge lends preparedness and, preparedness lends peace of mind.

posted by Ms. Lori @ 1:19 PM 10 comments

The Perfect Word

I accompanied my mother to her doctor's appointment today -- THE appointment. The appointment that we were dreading, even though we knew what was to come of it.

As the oncologist flashed her peculiarly inappropriate smile (I call it her "picnic smile" because the woman, brilliant as she may be, is a freaking loonball whose smile exudes sunshine and barbecue while uttering phrases like "last ditch effort" and "less than five percent chance), she calmly, between bites of her roasted wienie (in my imagination) explained that there is nothing more medicine can do for Mom.

I already knew this in advance, but Mom, although knowing deep within this was it, still could not accept that fact without hearing it from the doctor's mouth.

I watched my mother intently as the doctor cheerily rattled off the many facets of palliative care, the whats and the what-to-comes, and with each syllable, my mother's face, which has changed so very much in the last month or so, grew more and more unrecognizable until she took on the appearance of someone else's mother.

Mom has lost so much weight that the once-snug pink pullover shirt she wore today hung loose about her frame, the neckline fluid, sliding off over her left shoulder. I gazed at the nape of her neck as the doctor sang of chemo pills and home health care aides, and was startled by the yellowness of the skin, the slight hump that was never before a part of her bodyscape. I looked at her face again, wondering about the yellow. Her face didn't look yellow, but there was a disquieting artificiality to the tone...I peered harder, focused as much as my pitifully hyperopic eyes could, and realized that she had applied so much makeup, the yellow cast was hidden beneath layers of Cover Girl.

And as the doctor chirruped on about how very strong Mom was, and how impressed she was by what Mom had endured, how she'd seen patients half Mom's age endure much, much less, and OHfuckingBLAHblahblah, I stared at the nape of my mother's neck and thought about what it will be like to live in this world without her.

We are not close, for various reasons, and I still struggle daily with my life experience playing on a perpetual loop, the sights, sounds and smells just as clear as the day they were produced, but she is my only mother, and I love her.

And I have so many wishes that I'd hoped would be granted during our lifetimes, many of which have been waiting patiently since I was a little girl. Those wishes, I now realize, will never come true, but that doesn't stop me from believing in them. Because she is my only mother.

When the doctor left the room, Mom put her head near my shoulder -- not on, near, kind of bowed her head and moved it toward me, and so I leaned in, put my arm around her shoulders, and patted, patted, patted. It felt awkward, alien, and in that moment, I forgot how to feel.

The patient advocate walked in just then, and I, grateful for the interruption, quickly removed my arm. The woman was pleasant, just the right kind of cheerful (no barbecue), and genuinely compassionate. She asked Mom how she was taking today's news, and my mother, perplexed, asked what she meant by that. The woman gently reworded the question, adding "Many people have a hard time coming to terms with this."

Mom didn't answer her, so I spoke up, said "I think this is all still so surreal for her." The woman nodded vigorously and said that that was a "perfect word" for this situation.

Surreal. Not real. Someone's else's reality. Someone else's face, someone else's skin, someone else's pain. Bizarre. Dreamlike.

Someone else's mother.

And all the years between 1965 and 1989.

And strange lights in the sky, and whispers of goodbye in the dead of night, and laughter around an oval table, puppies, lasagna, and secret journals hidden beneath someone else's bed, the phantoms that visited us both, the angels with no names, the charcoal sketches and pastel ribbons, the houses in suburban tracts, the hope, and one thousand tiny wishes that will always be alive...

All still so surreal.

posted by Ms. Lori @ 8:34 PM 23 comments