HANGING BY A THREAD

As you probably realised from my Blip yesterday, Mum’s life was hanging by a thread last night and as we sat with her from 7 p.m. until just after midnight, we realised that her life was ebbing away and we needed to say our “Goodbyes”.  Mum was never on her own during the time we were there and Mr. HCB and I were pleased to be able to pray with her and read her favourite passages from the Bible, knowing that even if she didn’t appear to be “with us” as she was in a very deep sleep, the hearing is the last sense to go.

At about midnight, when Mum’s breathing deteriorated quite rapidly, I rang my niece, Jolene, who came over immediately and confirmed what I thought and then I rang the Community Nurse, who arrived within half an hour.  In the meantime, Karen had arrived so we were all there when the nurse gave Mum more medication at about 1.00 a.m.  She told us again that it could be hours or days, then she left, reassuring us that if we needed her again, we could just ring.

Just after 2.00 a.m. Mum’s breathing deteriorated even further and at 2.14 a.m. she slipped away peacefully, with Karen, Jolene, Mr. HCB and me at her side.  It was a great relief to us when the actual moment arrived and we were grateful to have been reassured by the nurse before she left that Mum was not in pain and seemed comfortable.  Karen rang my brother, Paul and he arrived about twenty minutes later.

I then had to ring the Community Nurse again, as she was able to verify the death, rather than waiting for a doctor, because Mum’s GP had visited only a few days before, which made the process so much easier.  We were so grateful that the same nurse came, so knew the situation without us having to make further explanations.

After the nurse had certified that Mum had died, we then had to wait for the funeral directors to come, which was another hour or so;  the two men who came were lovely and very respectful of Mum and our wishes - we were really impressed, but by this time, Karen and Jolene had left.  You may remember that Dean, one of Karen’s twin sons, and Jolene’s brother died suddenly in April of this year and it was obvious that they were both upset so having been with Mum when she died, didn’t feel they needed to stay, so Paul, Mr. HCB and I just chatted and reminisced about various memories and funny incidents for the next hour or so.

Mr. HCB and I eventually got home at about 5.30 a.m.  We decided that we wouldn’t bother to go to bed, but would have toast and coffee, with lashings of butter, which we really enjoyed and then we just sat chatting and reading.  We had about an hour’s sleep and decided that we would go to Church to be with our other family, which we did, and were cocooned with love.

Under Door 22 of our Advent of Change Calendar, for the Listening Place charity, it says, “Today you have contributed towards an hour of specialist listening support, offering comfort to someone who feels that life is no longer worth living.”  As a family, we are pleased that we were able to be with Mum on the final stage of her journey on earth, were able to tell her how much we loved her and that her suffering is now over. 

I went out into the garden before 8.00 a.m. to wander around and just mull over the events of the early morning and found this spiral “thread” on our passion fruit plant and thought it fitted our situation perfectly.

“A single thread of hope is still
     a very powerful thing.”
Arsh Saifi

P.S.  Thank you so much for your very kind comments, thoughts and prayers for yesterday’s Blip - it was heartening for us both to read them all and to feel the warmth and love from our Blip friends.