How had I never heard this before? “Really?” I said.
Sure, I knew my mom had graduated from Vassar in 1972 and must have lived through the whole hippie thing, but I’d never imagined her being a part of it in that way. I knew she was a fan of classic rock, that she sometimes sang along with old songs on the radio. But somehow I’d missed hearing about this entire chapter of her life.
She nodded. “Crystals and beads wrapped in wire. We camped in the back of Bobbi’s old Ford station wagon and made enough money for a little food and gas to get to the next show.”
I shook my head, still unable to picture any of it.
What else didn’t I know about my mother and her life before me?
Teresa smiled. “It’s entirely possible our paths crossed back then. I went to quite a few shows myself.”
“Maybe I sold you a crystal necklace,” my mother said.
“Maybe you did,” Teresa said with a smile as she touched her own necklace.
“That’s a beautiful amethyst,” my mother said. She turned, looked at her piece of quartz on the bedside table. “It’s been years since I’ve listened to the Grateful Dead,” she said wistfully.
“I could play some later if you’d like,” I suggested.
Mother smiled. “?‘Box of Rain.’ That was always one of my favorites.”
“Mine too,” Teresa said. She opened her bag and pulled out some paperwork. “Okay, so today we’ll get the not-so-fun stuff out of the way before the music and dancing can commence. We’re going to do the intake paperwork, then we’ll go over all your meds and talk about the game plan.”
“The game plan,” my mother said, smiling darkly, “is for me to die in the end.”
My breath hitched. It’s not that I didn’t know and accept the truth: she was going to die, and it would be sooner rather than later. But it didn’t feel fair. I wanted more time. Time to mend things, as my mother had promised. Time for us to try to get to know each other again. Hearingthe anecdote about the Grateful Dead shows made me realize how much I longed to learn all the things I didn’t know about her.
The truth was, I wanted more good stories, good memories to help drive away the bad ones. After my mother was gone, I wanted to be able to remember her as having once danced to the Grateful Dead and sold crystal necklaces at their shows, as an amazing artist who taught me to paint and draw, leaving behind her own legacy—a love of art passed down to me, then to my own daughter.
Teresa nodded, took my mother’s hand again. To my surprise, my mother clutched at Teresa’s hand and squeezed right back. “That’s the plan for all of us one day, isn’t it?” the nurse said. “But we’re here to support you in the journey in the way you wish to go, surrounded by your loved ones and being as comfortable as possible. We’re going to make sure you have everything you need.”
“Sounds like we’re planning a cruise,” my mother said. There was a little glimpse of the mother I recognized, snarky comment and all. I had to smile, laugh out loud even. And my mother laughed with me.
We got the paperwork done and the meds sorted. Teresa set up a chart, even more detailed than the one Paul had left, to help me keep track of them. My mother had been prescribed long-acting morphine every twelve hours but could get an extra dose of short-acting morphine every four hours if she needed it. There were minimum and maximum doses to be followed based on her level of pain. We reviewed a ridiculous pain chart with a smiling green face at one end (for zero/no pain) and a red frowning face with tears (ten) at the other. She also had Ativan available for anxiety. Teresa said this was a common med—anxiety was a perfectly natural part of the end-of-life process. Then there were the pills for the side effects of the other pills—laxatives, antinausea meds—each with their own instructions for when and how much to give, and what to do if they didn’t work.
My mother seemed exhausted and in considerable discomfort by the end of the visit. Teresa asked her to rate her pain from zero to ten—“You both need to practice,” she told us—and gave her a dose of short-actingmorphine when my mother told her she was at seven. Soon afterward, my mother drifted off to sleep.
“Is it really okay to give her so much morphine?” I asked as I walked Teresa out.
“It’s our job to keep her as pain-free as possible. Am I worried about opiate addiction in a patient who’s in her last weeks of life? No. If she’s in pain, give her the as-needed dose. Just document it—depending on how much of the short-acting she’s requiring, we may up her long-acting. But never give her more than the maximum amount listed on the bottle, unless you talk to me first. Too much could slow her breathing, even stop her heart.”
I nodded.
“Last night my mother was up wandering around the house at three in the morning. She seemed… out of it. She didn’t remember where she was or how she’d gotten here. Do you think that could be the medication?”
Teresa frowned. “Could be. Could be her illness. Probably a combination of the two. But being up and wandering in her condition is dangerous, especially in an unfamiliar space. She’s too frail and unsteady on her feet. The very last thing we want is for her to fall and break a hip. We want her to spend her last days here, with her family, rather than in pain in a hospital.” She paused, thinking. “Definitely put up the rails on the sides of the bed at night. And let’s up her Ativan before bed. Give her two pills tonight instead of one and see if that helps. If you’re both up in the night, give her more morphine and Ativan if it’s after one a.m.”
“Okay.”
“Do you have an old baby monitor by any chance?”
“Um… maybe in the basement. I can check.”
“It might be useful. You could put it in her room, and if she gets up, hopefully you’ll hear her. Also, if she wakes up and needs anything, all she has to do is call for you.”
I nodded. “If I can’t find our old one I’ll get a new one.”
“There are bed alarms we could get too, but I don’t think we want to go that route. Not yet. We don’t want to agitate her or frighten her.”
