close.

mom's skin is drawn looking now, and a waxy, yellowish color.
(when the family came to visit this weekend, we were all impressed by how lovely mom's skin looked - really glowing. that time has passed now.)
her breathing is scary. last night she had what could only be described as a death gurgle. the hospice nurse warned us to not make too much of it, and said it probably wasn't as distressing for her to have as it was for us to hear. good, because that was a terrible sound. her breathing was really quick last night, but it's even more so now. it's like she's jogging, sucking in tiny gasps and puffing them out. the nurse says that she's not getting much oxygen, hence the gasping.
she has a fever all the time, no matter what we do.
she doesn't respond to speech.
last night she made moaning noises.
we're done with the phase where we try to deal with individual symptoms.
now we just give her morphine regularly and try to keep her comfortable.
the nurse on-call last night said mom won't go if she's not comfortable (like, if she's gasping for breath, actively involved in the fight to live, she's not going to be inclined to just stop.) she recommended that we make mom ultra-comfy (crush an ativan up and mix it with morphine, for example) so that she'll be more likely to just drift off and not wake up.
that same nurse also recommended that i think about where i want to be when people come to take mom's body out of the house. she said that that can be a traumatic thing to see, so some people wish they'd left the house, or at least stayed in another room.
i appreciated the suggestion.
we're all so tired.
since mom could die at any moment, we all want to be ready all the time.
last night, while i was giving her some meds, i happened to look at her face, and it looked SO much like my mom, the way that i know her, and yet so NOT her. it really hit me, again, that this is her dying.
my mom is dying in the next room.
every breath is getting her closer to her last. (again, i guess the same could be said for all of us, but it's clearly not the same.)
my mom.
she's not ever going to be herself again, the way i know her.
being around it constantly it's easy, and necessary, to sometimes let that fact drift a little from our consciousness.
this is the worst/best/worst time of my life.
in a lot of ways, it's so much like The Golden Summer.
me, lu and tab barely working, spending all our time together.
a time of tremendous internal change and personal growth.
tons of laughing and crying.
and my mom, the center point of everything.
ben's comment about still having a relationship with his mom, past her death, was helpful.
i hope that i am able to check in with her sometimes, or feel her presence.
and, at this point, i hope she doesn't wait too much longer.
it's only going to get yuckier, physically.