It was a Tuesday, about a week after the hospice care had started, when the hospice nurse advised bringing the family together. She gave us a 48 hour timeframe, maybe less. My sister informed me at work as soon as she knew. My dad had accompanied Princess on the field trip she’d earned, and my sister asked me whether I thought he’d gotten back yet. He was, and she contacted him with an update. I contacted my husband, who was working late that night on a rehearsal that couldn’t be rescheduled. We couldn’t get someone to cover the kids for me so I could go to the apartment after work, so I picked up the boys, made dinner for the four of us, and waiting until Hubby got home around 9:00 to drive back down to be with my family.
The assembled group consisted of my mom and sister, three sets of aunts and uncles (the fourth was due in town on the weekend for my cousin Jon’s wedding), and four cousins with a fifth on her way up from college. Nanna was sleeping, her breathing shallow and noisy. We mostly rotated through the bedroom, with my aunt laying right by her side in the bed so that she was never alone.
After a few hours, my mom and my sister and my aunt insisted on me going home. I couldn’t skip work the next day; I had an important meeting that I couldn’t reschedule. I wanted to stay, yet I couldn’t handle staying any longer. They stayed through the night, being there to represent all of us who couldn’t.
I stopped to visit again on Wednesday morning, on my way to work, on an impulse. My first meeting wasn’t until 9:00, so I texted our Exec to let her know I’d be in just in time for that meeting. I stayed with Nanna for about 20 minutes, and told her I would be back that afternoon, when I finished my last meeting at 2:00. When I got to work, our Exec rearranged the schedule to move my 2:00 to 1:00. She would do whatever I needed her to do so I could try to be there for Nanna at the end.
As soon as I got back to my desk from my 10:00 meeting, I saw a missed call from Princess’s school on my office phone and my mobile. My heart sank. When I called back, the counselor told me that Princess had experienced an episode of suicidal ideation and would not re-engage with staff. She was on her way to the ER. So, I was too.
I arrived at the hospital around noon. I texted my sister and my husband on the way, promising an update when there was one. Around 2:15, I got a message from my sister. Nanna was gone. I didn’t even have it in me to cry at that point. A few more hours passed without our getting any further with Princess’s situation. Around 7:30, my husband brought me a sandwich for dinner and my phone charger, which I’d requested. I stayed on Facebook and Twitter and email trying to remain connected with the people I should have been with (but being with them meant I wouldn’t have been with my daughter, and I needed to be there, too). The ER social worker came soon after, and made the recommendation that I didn’t want to hear- intake to a mental health facility. I caught a few hours of sleep on the pull out chair in the hospital room, and the nurse woke me around 1:30 AM to bring me paperwork to admit Princess to a hospital not far from my parents’ house (a facility we’d never used before, but our best option because our first choice had no beds available) and let me know the transport would arrive by 2:30. I followed the ambulance to the hospital, worked through the admissions paperwork, and drove home. I took my medication, filled out the note Hoss needed for school on Thursday so I could take him to his scheduled doctor appointment, and collapsed into bed about nine minutes before Hubby’s alarm sounded to start his morning. I fell asleep solidly enough that I didn’t hear the boys prepare for school, didn’t hear Hubby explain why he was taking them instead of me. The alarm I set went off at a time when I would normally have been knee deep in preparing documents for my upcoming Board meeting. I checked in with my mother for mutual brain dumps- mine to provide an update on Princess, hers to let me know what arrangements were likely to happen for my grandmother. I checked my email, I took Hoss to his therapy appointment, I stopped at the church to put Nanna on the prayer list at Mass. I spoke to the doctor and the social worker (by phone, each in a separate conversation) to give them more history and background and any insight I could about what was happening to my child. I packed a bag to take to Princess at the hospital and stopped by my office to pick up my notes for what songs and readings I thought my mom might want for her meeting with the priest on Friday. Then I picked up the boys so that my husband could go see our baby girl (even at 13, she is my baby girl) before his rehearsal. I oversaw homework, I fixed dinner. I put the boys to bed and started looking for pictures for my sister to use in the slideshow at the funeral home, I texted with cousins in our shared grief, but I still didn’t cry.
I focused on work on Friday morning. I did things that could not be postponed or delegated. I tried my best to feel normal. At 1:00, I had an appointment with the social worker to outline the first day of the hospitalization and met with the doctor to discuss his plans for treatment and medication. I got to visit with Princess, since I wasn’t going to have a chance that night. I picked up the boys from school, ran a couple errands, I emailed my co-teacher and the head of the religious education department to say I wasn’t going to be able to teach class on Saturday morning, then I went to lay down. Two hours later, my husband woke me up so we could make dinner. He had to leave after dinner to go stay with his father, whose Alzheimer’s Disease has progressed to a point where he cannot be left alone when my mother-in-law goes away for the weekend. Once the boys were asleep, I poured a few fingers of Scotch (not Nanna’s brand, though) into a glass I’d kept from my grandfather’s bar when we cleared out the house two years ago. More texting and Facebook-ing and looking at pictures. My sister had told me she would take the boys on Saturday, take them to the ball game and meet me in the evening, so that I could do whatever I chose to. I visited Princess during the mid-day visiting period. I went to church as scheduled, and avoided eye contact with everyone with whom I was serving when Nanna’s name was read during the prayers for those who had “gone to sleep in the hope of rising again” for fear that I’d start crying and not stop. We went out for dinner, then I took the boys home and waited until they were asleep before I decided to wallow. But I still couldn’t quite let myself let go to cry.
The funeral was on Tuesday. I took the boys to school and met my parents at their house before we joined the rest of the family at church. My reading got a little blurry and I had to breathe through some of it, but I held it together. The weather was rather pleasant, unlike so many interments I've attended in the rain or the wind or the overcast nothingness. We stood and said our appropriate prayers and hugged each other. Then my sister fell apart crying. And my floodgates let loose. We huddled, joined by a few others who glommed into the cry-fest for that moment. Then we all dried our eyes, took our deep breaths, and moved on. Reception at the assited living facility's party room, the same room where we'd conducted our last few family Christmas gatherings (complete with a visit from our favorite party crasher, a gentle old guy with dementia who would had a tendency to walk away with unattended wine). We retired to my uncle's house, with its bar still set up on the ping-pong table after his son's wedding-related festivities three days earlier. We shared our crap; our amusements and our sorrows were all fair game. And we vowed we'd find more ways to bring everyone together for those dumping sesions, but for less bleak reasons.
I got home after the boys were in bed. My brother-in-law had been babysitting until one of us could get home (Hubby had a late meeting at school). He left in a hurry, having been at our house for almost 6 hours at that point. I snuck into Hoss' room to say good night, and upon sitting down on the bed, felt myself drop with a "thunk."
Earlierin the evening, my brother-in-law had tossed Hoss a bit too enthusiastically down on the bed while playing. A number of sub-mattress slats were broken, but Hoss is small enough that putting the cracked slats back in position gave him enough support to sleep. My extra weight, however, was more than the cracked wood could bear.
After a day full of crying, I had no choice but to laugh.
