I had some bad news today. My Mum is very ill. She has a degenerative illness which makes her very frail and her immune system hardly seems to exist anymore. Mum has had a couple of ‘close calls’ with infections over the last few months. The last one was around Christmas time, when she was so ill it seemed as if she wouldn’t pull through. Against all odds she did, but it made her weaker still.
Now another infection is taking its toll and this may be harsher than before. I have been told to be prepared for the worst.
My Mum doesn’t live with me. She needs constant nursing and is in hospital in the UK. I try to visit her all I can and helped nurse her for weeks through her last infection. But it isn’t always possible to be with her. I have my family here who need me in many different ways, and getting flights so that I can see Mum for a few days and then return here can be very difficult.
And often when I visit Mum she doesn’t even recognise me.
It’s part of the illness you see. There is only so much a body can take. In Mum’s case, the illness has affected her ability to think properly or even relate to her surroundings most of the time.
Mum and me have always had a ‘love hate’ relationship. We are as unalike as chalk and cheese, which caused numerous tensions as I was growing up. But I still love her very much, and when she remembers, she also loves me.
But it would be a lie if I said that not being recognised by her does not hurt.
It also makes me feel very guilty for being so far away from her most of the time.
I try to make it up to Mum when I do visit her. Sometimes for brief moments she even remembers me, which is great. But most of the time she thinks I’m just another nurse.
Being ill doesn’t make a person any easier to live with either. Mum could always be cantankerous. In her more salient moments she still is. But now I love her for it, rather than resenting her ‘nagging’ as I did when I was a kid. Because it shows she still has a spark.
The earliest I can fly over to see Mum is the beginning of next week. On her birthday. I am hoping this is a false alarm and by the time I get there she will be ok. But I doubt it. To be honest, I am fearing the worst and hoping I haven’t left it too late.
I spoke to Mum on the telephone today. She was polite and tried to be interested, but she didn’t know me. She was also too weak to speak for long. I hope it wasn’t the last time I get to speak to her. I’ll try to ring ever day until I can get to see her.
So if there isn’t another post here for a while, I guess you will know why. Either I don’t feel much like writing, or I’m busy sorting out packing and organising things for when I am away. In any case, once I am in the UK, I will have other much more important things to take up my time.
I’ll see how it goes and hope against hope there is something good to say here soon.
I love you Mum.
[...] I wrote my previous post, about My Mum, I was quite distraught. After writing it, I couldn’t bring myself to do any updates on this [...]