Sunday, December 05, 2010

This could be a really sucky Christmas

I've been bracing myself for the pain of our first Christmas without Mom. The rest of us will all be together, but that gaping, Mom-sized hole is gonna be raw.

TW called home earlier this afternoon to let his brother know we were planning to come up for another visit next weekend, but he waved us off. MuMu is more & more out of it (she asked TW, again, how the kids are), so I guess P thinks she won't know us if we visit. From what TW relayed, it sounds like MuMu's decline is accelerating; last week, just making the short trip to the bathroom tired her enough that she needed oxygen for 5 or 10 minutes before returning to her recliner. She's weak, she's in pain, and she's outlasted the 3-6 months the docs gave her when they diagnosed her terminal cancer 8 months ago.

This could affect our plans to spend Christmas with my family - they live in the midwest, while MuMu & P live 5 or 6 hours' drive northeast of us. Depending on how much longer God gives MuMu, we might end up going north for a funeral before going west for Christmas (or post-Christmas), or cutting our midwest trip short to head back east for a funeral. Or MuMu might hang in there until after New Year's. As the Russian proverb says, God knows and he ain't tellin'! (OK, so it's a colloquial translation, but it made Mom laugh.)

Pray for us all - it's been a helluva year.

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