AN ENIGMATIC AND POIGNANT JOURNEY AROUND MY AGEING AND EVOLVING MOTHER! PART 144.

 

And more often than not, those words will be negative, such as saying she does not want something or she does not want to do something.  

This has meant that, more than ever now, my dear mother, for probably the remainder of  the end of her life, is going to be more isolated and confined in her body; and her inner world. 

With her thoughts, her desires and aspirations remaining known mostly only to her; except for those times when she desires things and is able to find effective means of expressing them to the beholder/s.

Is this phase a traumatic interlude in the closing stage of the life of  my dear mother?  

Is it making her sad, sorrowful and distressed? Or is she, according to the level of her cognition, her insight into what has befallen her, resigned to and is at relative peace with what she is making of the experience? 

Probably especially is she is not forcefully made to comply with what others, her carers, family, friends and relevant professionals consider to 'be in her best interest'?

These things I can only partly know or assume, as I am limited in how much I can know or believe, by having to rely on how she presents, sad or distressed or peaceful. 

And by how she reacts to our attempts to engage her in basic daily activities, such as attending to her personal hygiene, getting dressed and undressed, lying in or sitting up in her bed, and in sustaining her life, by eating and drinking.

Indeed, it is her poor responses to these activities which has led to her most recent hospitalisation. As my dear mother appears not to want to continue to cooperate with the fulfilment of any of them. 

Whether or not the combination of specialist nursing and medical care will succeed in endowing my dear mother with an extended 'will to live a bit longer', by continuing to cooperate with her carers, is yet to be seen.

To be continued!