My mom passed away last night...

[Tony Bandiera Jr]

First my dad in 1999, and now in 2020 on Dec. 8th at 7:51 PM Pacific, my mother passed last night after an extended battle due to strokes and at least one severe heart attack. She was 84.

In July 2016 she had a stroke and heart attack while in the shower, and was not discovered for over 48 hours. The damage was considerable, mainly with motor functions and speech. I was told that her cognitive functions were still pretty good. About a year or so ago she had another stroke while in the care facility. My so-called family never bothered to tell me, I found out when a friend ran into my brother in law.

My mother was a strong and independent woman, and I can only imagine the torture of the last four years, and I take some comfort that she is now in peace and can rejoin my dad.

If this damn covid hasn't fouled things up, I am supposed to co-mingle my mom's ashes with dads. I don't know at this time, with California on lockdown, if that will even be possible.

Those of you with surviving parents, be sure that no matter what bad blood has passed between you, be sure to reach out and say I love you to them. You never know when it will become impossible, as it just did for me. (My mom and I got along fine, I just never found out what facility she had been moved to by my sister since I last saw her on Xmas 2016.)

[Frank Cox]

Over the past few years I've gone from having to assist my mother with sorting out her finances and paying her bills, to selling her house and almost everything she owned, putting her into an assisted living apartment, then moving her from there into a secure care home for dementia cases. It's hard to see her decline right before my eyes like this, but what can you do?

My suggestion is simply to try to remember the good times.

My mother lives largely in the past now, but so far she always knows who I am, she's reasonably contented and happy, and I can't ask for more than that.

[Mike Blakesley]

I'm sorry for your loss, Tony. Losing a parent, especially a mom, is the worst.

My mom passed away this past April, at age 88. She was fiercely independent and vowed she would never live in a nursing home. But we could tell she was declining -- she was starting to get confused by some things, and lost the ability to balance her checkbook, which was a big deal to her as she was a banker. Her dad had lived to age 90, and I just had this feeling that Mom was going to get worse to the point when we would have to put her in the nursing home, and she would hate us and we would hate the situation and it would be miserable.

Then one day, just after she and my sister finished an exercise class, Mom collapsed in her house. Luckily my sister was still there and able to help her. They took her by ambulance to the hospital and she died about an hour later from (it turned out) a blood clot. We were all in shock, because up until that day she'd been frail, but healthy and we all joked she would probably outlive us.

I get a lot of comfort from the fact that she lived her whole life right to the end the way she wanted to and never really had to give up anything. She would have hated life under the whole Covid mess. So now she's with Dad, no longer frail, and I know she's in a better situation than she was here.

I hope the same is true for your mom, Tony.

[Jim Cassedy]

I'm sorry for your loss. There's really no words I can say that will ease the pain you feel right now, but please accept my condolences and my sincere wishes that you find the inner strength to get through this difficult time. My mom passed away, peacefully, in her sleep, back in mid February of this year at the age of 99. Although she had been physically fairly healthy until shortly before she passed, she had been slowly sinking into alzheimers & dementia for the past several years and so she was mostly no longer really able to carry on a coherent conversation, although she still seemed to recognize me when I'd go to visit her at the assisted living facility in Arizona where she was at.

I had also lost my younger brother, Dan, less than a year earlier. I never told my mom about it. I figured there was no point in doing so, since, in her mental state, she didn't seem to notice he was 'missing'. But during one visit, she suddenly turned to me & said "I haven't seen Dan lately." I froze for a second but then calmly replied: "Neither have I" and I changed the subject. Thankfully she never asked about him again! I consider myself fortunate that she passed away when she did, just before the whole Coronapacoplyse shut downs & travel restrictions began, since I was able to go to Arizona and give her a small, but nice, funeral & burial service which some friends and family were able to travel to attend. Things would have been much more complicated had he passed even just one week later.

I hope, even with all the corona-crap rules & restrictions in place now, that you will be able to do something for your mom that will help bring you some sense of closure. Unfortunately, 'death is part of life'. Losing a parent is tough, but hang in there, You'll get through things just fine. As Frank said in his post above, "Remember the good times"

[Randy Stankey]

The damage was considerable, mainly with motor functions and speech. I was told that her cognitive functions were still pretty good...

... My mother was a strong and independent woman, and I can only imagine the torture of the last four years, and I take some comfort that she is now in peace and can rejoin my dad...

... Those of you with surviving parents, be sure that no matter what bad blood has passed between you, be sure to reach out and say I love you to them. You never know when it will become impossible, as it just did for me...

I'm sorry to hear the news.

My mother-in-law had a stroke a while before she passed away. It sounds like your mother's case was similar.

Jean was an avid knitter and crocheter. The stroke knocked out her hand-eye coordination and manual dexterity.
Her occupational therapist tried to get her to make projects out of that "plastic canvas" stuff where you sew yarn through holes in a grid pattern. She *HATED* it because she was used to knitting advanced projects. She thought plastic canvas was for children. She had a hard time even doing that. She used to get so mad that she'd throw things across the room.

Jean also had Broca's Aphasia as a result of her stroke. She could hear and understand what people said, perfectly well for a person her age (85) but, when she spoke, she got her mords all wixed up and said things that sounded like nonsense unless you thought about it for a second. One time, she said, "Yesterday...was...puddle."
Broca's Area of the brain is one of the places where images and ideas are paired up with words and symbols. Damage to Broca's Area basically scrambled her lookup table.
It took me a minute to think and, suddenly, I realized that she was trying to say, "It rained yesterday."
I thought it was really smart, the way she worked around the problem. (Substituting words.)

Yes! I agree! Get square with your family and tell them you love them!
My father died suddenly and I never got the chance to tell him.
Our family situation was rather difficult because of severe alcoholism, plus some other issues.
The circumstances of his death were rather... Umm... different.
I was seventeen when it happened and my brother and I were the only ones home. The nurse called from the hospital and basically said, "I'm sorry, he's dead," then, pretty much hung up on me.
That was it. No closure. No nothing.
Whenever I hear of somebody's family member passing away, I often ask whether they had a chance to say their goodbyes. As much as I am glad to know that they did, it pisses me off, all over again, because they get to have something I will never be able to have.

Having closure with your family members is definitely a "Use It or Lose It" proposition!
My advice: Use it! Don't lose it!

[Marcel Birgelen]

My heartfelt condolences for your loss.

I've lost my dear brother last year and I can still feel the void he left every day. Losing someone close to you is always a catastrophe in its own, but in those strange times we live in, the process of grieving over the loss of a loved one is often made so much more difficult. I really hope it works out for you and your family and other people that matter.

I guess Frank has made a good point... It brings me back to a quote from that Mary Schmich's "Wear Sunscreen" essay (better known by the Baz Luhrman song): "Remember compliments you receive, forget the insults", which really is a motto which I try to fall back on.

So, I guess... Remember the good times and try to forget the bad ones...

But also don't try to get stuck in the past.

That last one, I know from myself, is a pretty hard one, but the only way to move on forward.

[Kenneth Wuepper]

Tony,
So sorry for your loss.

It is OK to cry about it.

Don't blame yourself for the past but rather make every day count for something.

[Frank Angel]

Echoing all your brothers here, Tony, my deepest condolences and sympathies. No matter how old you get, losing a parent is deeply painful. Losing both dad and mom, again, no matter your age, from then on you are an orphan. I am 79yrs old and even now, on occasion, in the quiet of the night when in my mine I remember how healing it was when my mom would stroke my hair to sooth some hurt that I had endured, i again become that 10 year old and tears can still come easily. As Kenneth wisely says, fill every day with as much love as you can.

[Leo Enticknap]

Echoing others here - very sorry to hear about your loss.

I don't know at this time, with California on lockdown, if that will even be possible.

As of now there is no quarantine requirement for people entering California, apart from vacationers: just official advice to do so. However, the Governor's order does include forcing hotels not to accept bookings for visitors from out of state, unless they are for at least the 14-day quarantine period. So my understanding is that if you don't have someone to stay with, you'll have to book a room for at least 14 days.

I suspect that an issue could be funeral home capacity and the time taken to process the formalities. I'm not sure about the north of the state, but south of the Bay Area the last time I looked, only Kern, Inyo and Mono Counties have not seen a significant surge in C19 deaths over the last few days. My guess is that it will be possible eventually, but that there may have to be a significant wait. Losing a close relative is never easy, but doing so while the C19 crisis poses so many other challenges must make it especially difficult.