End of Life Delerium or....??

Mom is slowly leaving this world. Lately she’s been frightened when she goes to sleep at night, wants me to sleep next to her and wants the light on all night. She names dead relatives she is seeing. In fact she asks me, who are all these people in the room? I have a baby monitor in her bedroom and I see her reaching out like she’s trying to touch someone. She’s always seeing children. She literally asked me, what is that light in the next room?

I know there is a debate between the scientific and the spiritual. Whether the brain is just shutting down or if there is another side to which we are traveling. I myself believe in the spiritual.

I watched the last moments of my aunts life. She was in the hospital and woke up momentarily out of a three day coma, sat straight up in bed, reached her arms out, laid back down and took her last breath.

Mom is only in this world from one moment to the next. If I’ve learned anything out of all this, it’s that we only have the moment. All the past mother-daughter issues I’ve worked out along the way and all the multiple future plans I’ve run through my head, they don’t exist.

This moment is the only real one. Mom no longer remembers the past and has no concept of the future, she only knows the here and now. Though my mind is still capable of racing to the past and future, I, too, only have the here and now. I have no more of an idea about my tomorrow than she does her’s.

As hard as it may seem sometimes, try to live and love in this moment, right here, right now. Because in reality that is all we have.

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how lovely
by: Greenacres

This post was beautifully written. It made my heart skip a beat! I watched my Gramma do the same things when I went to stay with her in the last months of her life.

She would be talking to "invisible" people and my Aunt would always ask excitedly, "Do you see Daddy?". I couldn't tell what she was seeing, but she was not afraid. I would also sometimes see her jump out of bed and say she was going to work.

I would just turn her around and back to bed she went! Hospice had her on some heavy medication because of the cancer, so she may have just been hallucinating. Who knows? I know she definitely was seeing people.

About living in the moment, you are right, but sometimes it is very hard for me. I know I feel better when I try! Thank you for your lovely words.

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