I'm off now for a break in respite care for about 5 days, so no updates for at least that long. I'll be in the hospice ward of the local hospital, and I admit to a certain ambivalence about it.
You see, right now, I'm doing physically very well having shrugged off the pneumonia, and my new herbal mix seems to be doing great things for my energy levels etc, and I may even have put on just a wee modicum of weight if my watchband is the reliable indicator that I suspect it is. I'll know about that tomorrow anyway. So spending time with the folk who are much closer (to the extent that one can ever predict) to dying than I am will be interesting.
I have no squeamishness about the whole death/hospital thing. I have worked in a hospital and as part of that was as often as not assigned to morgue duties. So that's not it. I have had a good close look and can see also that I don't have a superstitious fear of 'catching death' while I'm there. And I acknowledge that in many ways I do fit there, as someone with a 'life-limiting illness' as they say these days. It's wonderful that in our health system we increasingly acknowledge that early assistance with this whole issue is of great help. Which is why I can have this respite care.
Nor am I afraid of missing home, wife, dogs etc. Because I know I'll miss them and that's OK.
What's really going on is that I just have absolutely no idea what to expect of the experience - this is our first time - so I guess I'm just floating in that faux-serenity vibe you get when any tiny anxieties dissolve back to miniature vortices of wind and dust inside; you can see them if you look, and they tickle just a little, but they're not messing with your mood.
You know what the biggest of those is though? It's that in the silence and uninterrupted me-timeness of it, I'll find that bit more acceptance I've been looking for, and that this just might make the whole considering imminent mortality thing so much more easy and OK. Because if I lose that set of fears, it's even less stuff I carry by which I 'know' who I am. Does that make sense?
Anyway, have a great week all.
I think it makes lots of sense... sometimes I think I'm afraid to relax and enjoy anything on my own lately, as I might forget about 'who I am', as a mother. A mother to a child with lots of physical concerns. So if I focus on just me, then I get a bit scared, and yet I can step outside of the whole mother taking on the world thing, and see a bigger picture.
ReplyDeleteHope your week is refreshing.
Cindy L.