annanotbob2's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Hospice We're in the hospice, settling down for the second night. I've already taken my sleeping pill so this will be short. My precious Elder Daughter has actually rallied a bit since we've been here and out of the clatter of an underfunded, understaffed hospital. Not much, but she's been awake a bit and is awake now. I put some classical piano lullabies on Spotify and I'm right next to her bed, leaning over to stroke her arm. Because she lost her cognitive function so long ago, and the power to speak, but then startled us all with odd little flashes of genius, it's impossible to really be sure how she is in herself, whether she knows what's happening or isn't having thoughts at all. Her flash of genius was saying hello in Romanian to a Romanian care worker who had been on holiday for two weeks, after not speaking at all for months, how did she know Rulaka was Romanian? How could she remember this word? So no assumptions. She has a little serious face on her while awake, but not enough response to be sure she really knows who I am. We don't have a time frame, but the end will be heralded by the inability to clear mucus from the airways and that isn't happening yet. We were told that people who wanted to say goodbye should come sooner rather than later so today a total of twenty two assorted aunts and uncles, dads and step-dads, brother, sister, son, care workers and friends all came to visit for a while, not all at once but in an unending stream. There will be more tomorrow - my sister, back from her hols and a load of cousins and the bastard son-in-law. Then it will be us, me, her sister and brother and her son. I am in a stone-cold keeping-going place, with short, intense outbursts of anguish and no capacity to make decisions or organise these visits. I fled today for a couple of hours when I couldn't bear all those fuckers being there, but couldn't throw them out as they all love her too. It is an exquisite agony, accompanying someone you love through the last part of their life. There is a beauty to it, but it's unbearable and you don't want it to end. The hospice is lovely, staff spot on, all that, yatter yatter, don't care - though I suppose I would if it were different but I am untouched by it. I'm losing things. Last night the light for me kindle, tonight my slippers. It's not a massive room - big enough for a hospital bed and a sofa bed and space enough to not feel cramped, but not enough to lose your slippers. it has the look of a room occupied by me and YD - shit piling up around the edges.
bed now. 10:59 p.m. - 19.05.17 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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