Mom nearing death

Peggy’s mother is dying. She is sometimes rational for brief periods during the day, but at night she forgets where she is and who her family are. She then becomes frantic and pleads for help, sometimes all night long. In the daytime, she is apt to become stuck on the same sentence which she repeats without pause hour after hour. One day, it was “Like sands through the hourglass, so go the days of our lives.” Other times, her mantra is a continuation of her pleading from the previous night.

Peggy is in Mississippi standing vigil. My parents being dead, I tend to focus on what a relief it is to have that kind of thing out of the way, and to wish that it could be out of Peggy’s way too. “Mom” is miserable. The lives of her loved ones are stuck while they await her passing, and, at 78, her husband won’t live long enough to pay off the medical bills.