Easter

I tried very hard yesterday to remember my last Easter with Mom.  I could not remember it.  I could not remember if I hosted, what we ate and who was there.  Even after looking at the pictures, I remember little about Easter 2008.  Only one picture brought back any kind of memory.  It seems that such an important event should have been burned on my brain but it isn’t.

I do remember with great clarity the rest of that spring.  In late April, Mom and Dad went to Ohio for my cousin’s wedding and Mom was experiencing back pain.   By graduation season that back pain grew to the point where she went to the doctor.  Mom was one of the toughest people I have ever met, so for the back pain to constitute a trip to the doctor (and a missed graduation ceremony), it must have been excruciating.  Months of physical therapy, pain killers and unanswered questions ended with the discovery of a lump near her hip.   In July, the doctors discovered that she had lung cancer that had grown and spread to such an extent that it was breaking her hip.  Two hip replacements followed and by the time she started chemotherapy in October the tumors were literally coming out of her skin.  Instead of cancer eating away at her, it seemed to be engulfing her.  She died a day before her birthday  but was gone long before as she was lost in  pain and fatigue for months.

I have an almost photographic memory of the conversation with the doctor about hospice and how proud Mom was that she was awake and aware throughout the conversation.  I remember trying to find a hospice facility and a cemetery and I remember calling quite a few people.  The conversations were hard.  It was in these conversations that someone reminded me of a simple startling fact.

When one spouse dies, the other spouse is more likely to die.

No one could imagine my parents apart.  They had been such a team in life that it seemed impossible that either one could go one without the other.

For 49 months, I knew Dad would join Mom.  It was just a matter of time.  Too bad that knowledge did nothing to prepare me for the reality of his death.