Bernt's mum

Over the past few years mum’s health has been gradually deteriorating. Mama also started becoming forgetful with ever increasing signs of Altzheimer. When late in 2007 mum and dad required full-time care, they were still living in the same house in Hengelo we grew up in.

We were very fortunate to find an organisation that could provide a truly wonderful team of nurses (and were also fortunate that mum and dad have the means to afford that). The nurses are taking care of mama (and of papa before he died in February last year), on a rotating schedule.

The past couple of months mama has been mostly bed-ridden. When we visited last year mama was still out of bed most days, albeit in a wheelchair. Recently the tidings from Hengelo became increasingly worrying, with mama needing morphine skin-patches, and almost not communicating anymore. We all expected the end was coming near.

A few weeks back Bernt’s brother Gerben was talking in terms of weeks, but last Saturday, after mama had a particularly bad couple of days, he was talking days. The nurses were also regularly shocked after not having seen mama for a few days, plus the GP had visited twice the past week and now prescribed oral morphine too.

So Sunday I decided to go to Holland; I didn’t want to be late like last year with dad’s passing. Timing was 'right' too: Doris had resigned her job, finishing coming Friday, and hadn’t really started looking for another one yet. Her boss had already indicated that the finishing date could be flexible, and they were nice enough to let her have this week off. This meant we didn’t need to organise baby-sitting.

Gerben picked me up at Schiphol this morning (at 5:30am; the dedication…) and mama had just had two relatively good days on Sunday and yesterday. She was communicating a bit again, and much more ‘with it’. This ‘up-and-down’ pattern has been quite common with mama’s health the past year.

Today too mama was having a reasonable day. She looked relatively well: good facial colour and not as drawn as I’d expected. Mama was tired when we got in because the nurses had just changed her, but she did seem to recognise me. When an hour later nurse John said to mama ‘look who’s here’, pointing at me, mama said ‘ja, ik heb hem toen straks al gezien’ (yip, I saw him before already). So mama is registering things still.

We spoke a few times during the day – simple one-sentence conversations, but communication nevertheless. Mama is quite tired and occasionally seems to be a bit uncomfortable, but in general is looking at peace.

These are strange days. We've known for a long time that our time with mama was going to be limited, and I thought I'd come to grips with it. But that's rational or intellectual, not emotional. It's quite a different thing when it's actually happening. That emotion has hit me a few times the past days.

I am really happy I have this opportunity to spend some time with mama again.

I’ll update this blog when necessary.