A Darkness More Than Night

I visited my mom this morning on my way to work and found her sleeping in the lift chair we recently bought her.  When I walked in, she was slumped over to her right side and didn't even hear me open her door.  As has been the case the past few days, she was lethargic and expressed little interest in doing anything more than continuing to sleep.  I had to wake her up to talk to me and she kept nodding off to sleep.  I told her goodbye after a few minutes and left for work.

I can't shake the feeling that my mom is like an old clock winding itself down.  And it's breaking my heart.

I spent the rest of the day at work in a fog.  I couldn't focus on anything for very long.  I called Jude after I left the office, because I wanted to talk to someone.  She answered but I could tell she was busy, so I told he I would see her at home.  I cried a little as I drove, trying to think of someone I could call who would understand how I feel.  I realized, though, that no one can understand how I feel because no one knew my mom like I knew her and no one had the relationship with her that I did.

I'm just so very, very sad, almost all of the time.  I feel such a sense of apathy and nothing really seems to matter in comparison to what my mom is going through.  The sense of sadness I feel is suffocating.  It's like quicksand or darkness.  I just can't escape it.  Maybe this is what being depressed feels like.  I don't know.  

I feel so helpless because after all my mom has done for me, there is nothing I can do for her when she needs me most of all.  She's slipping away before my eyes - a little more so each day - soon to be gone forever and I am powerless to stop it.  The thought of her spending what in all likelihood are her last, conscious days alone in her apartment at Maristone, sleeping in her chair, devastates me.

It's all happened do quickly.  Her physical and mental condition has deteriorated so rapidly that it's hard to remember the last time we had a normal conversation.  

I regret so deeply that I didn't spend more time with my mom the last few years.  Sure, we talked on the telephone every day, often times more than once.  We were so close.  But I didn't go to her house - the house I grew up in - enough and just spend time with her.  I didn't take the boys over to her house as much as I should have.  I didn't spend enough time just hanging out with her.  I would give up everything I own to have her back, healthy, for one more week, like old times.

I feel as if I took our relationship for granted.  Often times when I ran, I thought about how unmoored and adrift I would feel if she ever died.  Those were conceptual thoughts, though, not ones I planned on facing anytime in the immediate future.  I was right, though, because I do feel unmoored and adrift.  I also feel alone, so terribly and depressingly alone.

What I wouldn't give to have her call me one more time on my way home from work to talk about the latest sports news or to ask me why I haven't written something for the blog.

This is so hard.