The beginning of the end.

Time contracts and inflates and contracts again when a crisis is happening. If I look at a calendar I can say it was two weeks ago yesterday that I got the call that my mom was going to become a hospice patient. But whether in my brain it feels like 2 days or 2 weeks; I really can't say for sure.

My wife and I flew down on the Friday after that call from my sister. The day of the flight I found myself embracing time. This is something I do when I'm stressed, like when I have a deadline or a meeting I don't want to go to. It's like a way to buffer myself from the actual dreaded moment. The drive to the ferry was 20 minutes, the ferry itself another 20. The plain ride 2 hours, the drive to my parents another 90 minutes. 240 minutes before the dreaded moment where I'd see my dying mother. We got a bonus 20 minutes when our bus to my parents house got stuck in traffic.

With no more time to avoid the inevitable my dad picked us up at the bus stop. I had seen him 6 weeks earlier when I'd gotten the news that my my mother was barely eating and had lost 30 pounds. He's 83 and looked it then, but he looked worse now. Pale and maybe heavier and far more aged than he looked then. He looked exhausted and sad; my dad NEVER looks sad. He reiterated how bad she'd look. I knew she would, but somehow hearing it from one of the most optimistic people I know  made it more real.

We got to their house and after girding myself for a few minutes we made our way downstairs. The house has been, and still is in bad shape. The carpets which used to be white are stained and dirty and worn. The kitchen, which I had spent 2 days cleaning last year had dishes and dirt and boxes all over it. There was barely room to put our cups of coffee. The downstairs of their house has always been dark and a little dank. There are no windows to brighten the hallways and the rooms are hidden from light by trees. 

My head swam and I could feel my heart in my throat as we walked down the filthy, darkly lit stairs. I felt like I was in a horror movie. We walked into the room and the first thing that hit me was the smell, a deep heady mixtures of sweat, sickness, and though I might have been imagining it, death. There laying on her bed was my mother. 

During this illness she'd stopped dying her hair and it was grey, but not the elegant kind of grey that movie stars like Katherine Hepburn had; a dull sad grey. I'd seen her 6 weeks earlier and she had easily lost 20 pounds down to her current 106. Her head looked large and out of proportion to the rest of her body. Her cheeks seemed swollen. But it was the eyes that got me. A mixture of pain, sadness and despair. She couldn't even hold up her head to say hello.  I said hello and she got teary. She hadn't seen my wife in several years and when Lisa said hello my mom started to cry. My heart started to break a little like it would do a little more every day that week.