The end is near...

04/17:  My poor mother... she's really having a hard time transitioning.  And I feel so helpless.  All I can do is wake her up and give her more meds.  Hospice gave her morphine and anti-anxiety medicine to take together as a sort of "relax and sleep" cocktail.  It's little doses that can be taken at one hour intervals.  We both forgot to give it to her last night.  (She's been doing it mostly just at bedtime.)  She slept all day and I guess that's what threw us off.  Anyway, she had a bad night and a bad start to today (like yesterday) so she went back to bed and I gave her doses, one per hour for the first 3 hours.  Then I waited two and she had another.  Now it's been 3 hours and she didn't want another dose yet. She's utterly miserable.  We just talked for a bit - she wishes Wes (my brother) would grab her hand and pull her out of that old body into what's next.  I told her I'm talking to him every minute... apparently, he can't do that for whatever reason.  He'll know the moment she's ready.

And that's all I'm going to say on that subject.  I'm living it and that's enough.  No need to dwell on what's right here...  So on to the subject of plants!  Spring is definitely in the air, but we're still on that back-and-forth, yo-yo kind of weather.  Warm (had to turn on the A/C for 2 days last week!) then cold... It went from A/C weather one day to furnace weather the next.  We got cold rain and gales that howled for about 36 hours!  Today it's a perfect 65 degrees and still as can be.  As soon as it reached 40 this morning, I put plants back out.  I left out the little bulbs I've potted up with towels over them, and my Jade plants.  Well, Thursday and Friday nights it's supposed to fall below freezing, so it will ALL have to come back in for a couple days.  Maybe after that, it can all stay out, but you can't bank on it...

So I've potted up another batch of little SA bulbs, so right now I'm hovering at about 160 or so.  I wish they'd get to growing.  I can't sell them in 2 weeks if they have no leaves on them.  I have more pots of bulbs to break apart...

I got up to the top shelf to do some watering today and found two of my newest Haworthias looking like a million bucks:

I believe the top one is one of the emelyae hybrids and the bottom one is the one they call H. pumila 'Donuts'.  You can see why with the little circles!  Both are looking magnificent!  I hope to split up some of my really overgrown Haworthias this year...

I took my Hoya surigaoensis to the sink yesterday and took a deep breath and cut off the biggest leaf.  It had an imperfection on it, right in the middle, that has bugged me for a couple years.  But it was otherwise such a HUGE beautiful leaf, it was hard to get myself to do it.  I should have done it sooner.  Every time I look at it, my eye is drawn to that imperfection.  Now it's a beautifully pristine plant!

What spectacularly shiny big leaves this one has!

I have a Echeveria that has been blooming.  The pot it's in actually has three different Echeverias in it...

 

I may have to restart the plant itself once it's done blooming as it has a long stem.  I did that last fall with a couple Echeverias and one is in the front window and is budding up!  I'm surprised that it will bloom this quick after getting whacked just a few months ago!

Check out my Hoya carnosa ssp. carnosa:

This darling is growing like a freakin' weed!  I lost count of how many new vines and growth points it has!  I think it must be very happy in it's spot in the sunroom.

My one and only moth orchid has been under the grow light in the sunroom for awhile and it's rewarding me with a flower spinke, first time in a few years!

 

I'd forgotten how pretty it was!  The plant itself looks kind of meh... I don't think it looks very good.  When it's done blooming, I may just toss it and get a new one.

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 04/20  Three days later and Mom's still hanging in there.  All she's getting down is ice chips.  A couple days ago she tried a sip of water and it got her hacking and spitting, so now she only does ice chips.  She's SO out of it, though we did have a fairly lucid conversation last night.  Her eyes were all but closed, but we chatted a bit.  It's hard for her to keep focused.

 04/22 This is the day I think she's been waiting for.  It's her birthday.  She was almost there last night around 11:30 - I was sure she was making the transition, and I'm thinking maybe she did.  There has been really no lucid conversation in a couple days, though she has been calling out to Grandma Dora and even Connie a couple times.  Mostly her mom..  Merry has been here since yesterday morning.  I think she felt like the time is near and she needs to be here in spite of it being their busy time.  Maybe that's why the weather has been cold - to make it so Rick can handle things on his own right now.

 04/27  I'm going to finish and publish this.  Mom passed sometime in the night on Tuesday (the 25th).  She hadn't been responsive for about 4 days.  When I found her, I cried for about 5 minutes and then I told her "congratulations, Mom, you made it!"  I try not to think about the fact that I have to live the rest of my life without my mom because the idea can bring on a barrage of tears.  I have to tell myself that everyone goes through this, buck up!  Doesn't help, but then I just launch into a rampage of gratitude.  I'm grateful that she moved in with me a year ago and we got this year of constant companionship.  I'm grateful that she could spend her last days here in the comfort of what was her home, too, and didn't have to spend her last days and hours in a hospital or nursing home.  I'm grateful we had the aid of such wonderful hospice folks.  I'm grateful my job was so flexible that I was able to take that last couple months off to watch over her and help as much as I was able to. I'm grateful I had my mom for 64 years - I know SO many people (including Mom!) who lost their mothers quite young!  I'm grateful that we were so close, and so much alike that it was easy living together.  I'm grateful that she was clearly ready and slipped away with as much dignity as one can with some of the terrible things she had to endure the last few months.  And I'm grateful that we have this belief system that says she is NOT gone, that her spirit is right here with me until the day I join her.  

So, my first "sign" story is actually from the day before she passed.  I am of the belief that when someone is unconscious, comatose, unresponsive, whatever you want to call it, or even delirious, that person's spirit had probably already left their body.  It may still have a minor connection until the body stops, but I think they're mostly "out".  So I started asking Mom, by Sunday, please give me a sign if you're out.  It would make me feel a little better to know she wasn't suffering in there.  Monday, I opened the paper... here's my usual routine regarding the paper, which I get Mon-Fri.  I only get it for the puzzles, so I pull the puzzle page, fold it so the puzzles are on the outside and put it in the stack of puzzles.  Then when I feel like doing a puzzle, I pull from the stack, so I may be doing a puzzle from a month ago or last week.  That day, I decided to do "today's" puzzles.  When I got to the Jumble, here's what the words were:

I got chills when I filled in "Mommy", but then came "raven" - birds are purported to be messengers from our loved ones.  "Banana" I have to explain - my mom LOVES bananas, and I have to tell you that I have bought more bananas in the last year than I have bought in probably the previous 25 years!  I had to laugh at it!  And "handle"... I think she's saying "You can handle this!"  Wow, that just felt like a "here I am!!!" moment!

So it's been a weird couple days.  I've occupied my time cleaning out her drawers and packing her clothes to go to a shelter.  Going through my drawers as well... I don't know why, but this seems to be my coping mechanism.  I really dug deep and tossed and donated tons of shit after Mark died.  It kept me focused on other things.  Too much "still" time can make grief really hard.  You have to keep moving or you can really get stuck in it!  I don't go back to work until next week, and then we have the plant sale the first weekend in May, and the farmer's market in Plattsmouth through the summer.  I will be fine!  And thank goodness for my every-day chat friend Marco.  

So today, I cleaned out drawers in the upstairs bathroom.  Boy do I feel like I accomplished something!  There was so much shit jammed in there, and so much I needed to toss.  It took me about 2 hours.  And I spent the rest of the day getting plants outside.  I hope I don't regret it - now I hear we're going to have 3 or 4 nights down into the upper 30's next week.  Yikes!  They'll just have to tough it out!

So quickly, before I'm off to fix my supper, here is the pic I'm using in Mom's obit:

It's from a 1997 article in Omaha Woman magazine about the business.  And here is the obit I wrote:

Karen Kay (Bean) Eveland, 82, passed away peacefully at home in Omaha on April 25, 2023. Karen was born in Villisca, Iowa on April 22, 1941 to Dora and George Bean.  In August 1957, she married John Delaine Fredell and moved to the Fredell family farm north of Stanton until their divorce in 1974. 

She was preceded in death by her son, Wes Fredell; parents Dora and George Bean; sisters Verla and Rosalie. She is survived by sister Judy; daughters Denise Evans and Merry Hadfield (Rick); grandsons Brian Hadfield (Ann) and Jeremy Hadfield (Kara); great-grandchildren Ella, Will, Henry, Winston and Poppy.

Karen is a beloved soul who will be missed by many. She has been a faithful mother figure, friend, confidant, and inspiration to many. She took most pride in being a mother, but she was also a successful business woman.  She started a catering business she dubbed “Karen’s Kitchen” in 1984 which she transformed into a full-service event planning and venue called “Karen’s Fireside” in Omaha and ultimately in Papillion, NE. 

Her wish was to be cremated with no immediate service, and an all-out party a few months after. We will announce this to all who knew her when plans are made! Please join us in celebrating the joy of her new adventure!

This is the long version I hope to put in the Villisca Review - that's where she was born and raised, Villisca, Iowa.  And Dad's family farm, where I grew up, is a few miles from Villisca - our address was a Villisca rural route address.  The Omaha World Herald charged $420 for the short version!  I'll insert what Villisca charges when I hear back from them...Update:  it was a whopping $20 to put it in the Villisca paper!

Off to cook supper!