I want to write about the people who got us through my mom’s hospice care, and about her — the real, unfiltered, contradictory her — because I don’t think you can separate the two.
We had Holy Name Hospice with us for my mom’s care, and the team they gave us was amazing. I won’t use their real names here, but I’ll introduce you to them properly in a future post: our pastor, our social worker, our nurse, and our home health aide. Each one of them showed up for us in a different way, and somewhere along the line they stopped feeling like “the hospice team” and started just feeling like people who were in our corner.
Toward the end, we also had volunteers who came just to sit with my mom — no medical task, no checklist, just company — so that I could do laundry, walk my dogs, take a shower in peace. Honestly, sometimes just to go to the bathroom alone, with the door closed, like a regular human being. That’s a small thing until you don’t have it anymore.
## “Give Me 10 Minutes”
For a while, that still worked. I’d ask her if she needed anything, she’d say no, and I’d tell her, “I have to poop, give me 10 minutes.” She’d say okay, in her own sarcastic way — because of course she would.
One day I was in there maybe two minutes when I heard a loud boom.
She’d gotten up. On legs that were weak and unsteady in a way that should have stopped her, she decided she was going to get the mail — something she hadn’t done in months. I kept the front door open most of the time so she could see outside, get some sun, feel like the world was still out there. I always figured if anyone stopped by, an open door meant come on in. My mom loved having visitors, loved company beyond just me, and I never blamed her for that. There were plenty of days I was quietly praying for someone — anyone — to stop by too, so I could sneak out for takeout or run some errand she wanted done.
That’s hospice, though. The moment you turn your back for two minutes is exactly the moment they decide to test the legs that don’t work anymore.
## We Celebrated Everything
Birthdays, Valentine’s Day, Christmas — we didn’t skip a single one. I threw a hospice Christmas party, and looking back, I think everyone on the team was probably celebrating something different in their own lives, but we kept it Christmas for my mom’s sake. I cooked, I decorated the big tree, the whole living room, the bathroom, the kitchen — anywhere she could see from her spot, it was decorated. Two nativity scenes. I wanted her to be surrounded by it, not just aware it was happening somewhere else in the house.
## Her Magazines, Her Mouth
My sister got my mom a subscription to *In Touch* magazine, and it became a real part of her last few years. She read it every single day, cover to cover.
Here’s the thing about my mom that I don’t think I’ll ever stop finding both funny and completely on-brand: she could be sitting there reading God’s word one minute, and in the very next breath, before I’d even said a word to her, ask me “what the hell is your problem today?” Or launch into language that would make a truck driver blush.
That was her. Contradictions and all. And somehow, impossibly, I loved taking care of that woman — sarcasm, cursing, stubborn trips to the mailbox and all.
More on the hospice team, and more of these stories, soon.
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