Mama 2017

These are some of the last pictures taken of mama. I took them with my Kindle in the spring of 2017. She was sitting in her favorite chair at our house, where she spent part of the day every day with us, just visiting. She and Jim were discussing something, and I just happened to be fooling with my Kindle at the time.

She had fallen just before Christmas and hurt herself pretty bad. She was still having some problems from it, but she hobbled the short distance over to our house every morning for a long visit. The visits were getting shorter as the Spring turned into summer though, and her health was deteriorating.

The week of her 85th birthday she couldn't breathe and had to go to the ER at the hospital the next town over, who sent her on to a bigger hospital a couple of hours away. She spent part of the week there and was released on Thursday, on her birthday. She wanted to go home, but for the next three days it was a struggle for her. I did what I could, but, again, she had to go to the ER and back to the larger hospital. The Dr. admitted that he shouldn't have let her go home. Things went from bad to worse, as she had breathing problems and kidney problems, which led to her not being able to stand up or walk, but they put her in rehab on another floor.

In rehab, which was pure torture for her, they discovered that she had liver cancer, which had already spread to her kidney, lymph nodes, lower spine, etc., and she was very confused and couldn't understand what was going on. We were there for almost six weeks, before they transferred her to a local rehab/nursing home, where she was for five nights and four days before passing away June 6, 2017.

Eight months later we went through pretty much the same thing with my 94 year old father-in-law, who passed away in February 2018. It was a very hard time, and the grief continues to evolve. They are both missed so much, as well as our other two parents, who we lost six months apart in 2004.

These pictures are very painful to look at, and I only figured out how to get them transferred from my Kindle to my laptop back in the spring of this year, two years after they were taken, but I'm glad I have them, especially the top two, because that's how I want to remember her. She loved to talk!

There's no way to even imagine how painful and scary losing a parent is before it happens. We were both blessed to have good ones. My husband and I, as well as others who loved them, are changed forever...