terrible week....

This is pretty incredible....but again...not about D....amazingly.  Today, while at work/school, setting up my classroom to begin the school year, I got a call from my older brother in CT. where my mom lives....that my mom was missing,...my 91 yr. old mom.  Of course, I was quite beside myself,...as they searched for her, and I waited for another call back.   Finally, after 2 hours,...I got another call, and learned that she was found, in the hospital, in intensive care.  More on the specifics later...but the bottom line is that she was unconscious, had a brain bleed....and she was sedated and on a respirator.  She now (at 10 p.m. at night) was just given last rites, and I'm planning to either drive up there from where I live in Virginia, or fly up tomorrow.  I'm waiting for a phone call to see if she survives the night.  She is not expected to, according to the doctor.  Obviously....this is so so terrible....I can't begin to describe how much so.  I was just there and kissed her good bye at 6:30 a.m. on Friday morning....before I left to drive back to Virginia.  I did not think that it would be the last time I heard her voice, or kissed her cheek.  I am so so so sad....and it all feels surreal.  I don't know how else to describe it.  I just had to post this.

    My mom was found at 6 a.m.,....at this point, I don't know yet who she was found by.  Apparently, she got up out of bed, changed her clothes (wasn't still wearing her pajamas),...and went out for a walk (?)   The doctor said that she must have had a brain bleed that caused her to fall...not the other way around...there was no evidence that she'd hit her head...no mark on her. So, she was taken to the local hospital, then, because of the status of her brain, was transferred to Yale New Haven Hosp..  While they kept looking for her,...driving up and down streets, etc....someone called the local hospital and was told that yes, an elderly woman, a "Jane Doe" was admitted, then transferred to Yale.  The fact that my mom was laying on a street....a "Jane Doe".....is like a knife in my heart.  I have been tortured today by that image, that thought....and feel so guilty that we hadn't yet changed her situation that someone wasn't with her 24/7.  I'd just said that last week to my daughter...."I don't think that Grandma should be alone at all now....we need to change things so that she's not alone at all"...but I hadn't/we hadn't acted upon that yet.  My mom has been living in a house that's right behind my brother's house...like a guest house, on my brother's property.  She's had someone that comes in every day in the morning,...for about 2 hrs., and then someone later in the day, for the same...and my brother and even his daughters(at times)/my nieces come in during the day, intermittently.   My brother said good night to her at 9:45 last night and then she was gone this morning at 9 a.m..  Why she would have got up and been out walking at 6 a.m. is beyond me....not at all what she normally does. In fact, in recent times...she sleeps late...like 'til 10 a.m. at my house recently when she visited...when I'd wake her up.   It sounds funny,...but the fact that she hadn't made her bed this morning tells me that maybe something was already going on. I swear...she always always gets right up and makes her bed immediately....before a cup of coffee,...no matter what. 

   I feel like I'm rambling.  I have so many thoughts and feelings going through my head right now. I can't believe this is happening/has happened....and that I'm here in Virginia and all these people (my brother, his wife, my nieces, her caretakers) are all there with her and I'm NOT.  I feel like my heart is breaking.                     I do know that I'm so glad that I just recently went up to CT. to get her and flew her back down here with me...and spent over a week alone with her,...before a lot of other people came here to attend our daughter's engagement party.  Later on, I drove back up to CT. with my daughter and her fiance, so that they could visit with our extended family there...and stayed with my mom at her house and spent time with her again.

   No matter what day or time I'd call my mom....which was frequently...she'd answer and say, "I was just thinking about you."    I just was never ready for this....whether she's 91 or not.   : (