Well, what I have wished for, for more than a year is finally here. And I'm so not ready for this.

[Cailinrain]

16. I am with you

It has been almost 2 years since my mother died and I was having a rough night tonight and then read your post which brought me back to those last days. I took care of her full time in my home on my own while raising my son for 6 years post her stroke. Her last night before her last hospitalization, I turned away while retrieving her hoyer lift and she fell from the side of her home hospital bed. That wasn’t the beginning of the end as her dysphasia had dramatically increased over the past month but that last fall landed her in the hospital for the very last time. I stayed with her for 7 days, racing home every few days to shower and go back. I stayed by her side, talked and sang to her and layed by her side until she died a week later. I am no longer catholic at all yet recited the Hail Mary/Our father and other prayers to her in the hope of easing her death. It has wrecked me and fucked my life for the past two years and I am still recovering but being by her side was the best decision and only decision I could have made.
Brutal is the most accurate word to describe all this and I am so sorry you are going through it. Your last paragraph resonates to my core: “this is the hardest thing I have ever been through and it sucks. But I’ll be goddamned if she’ll go alone. But fuck me, this is brutal.” You have tried the best you know to help her as her disease progressed - but she will not be alone and this, I think, is the very most that any of us can wish for… to not be alone as we are dying. You are stepping up and holding her at the most vulnerable time in her life.
Thinking of you and your mom and sending much strength and hugs.