The New Landing

So, I am fond of using a metaphor when talking about my mother's terminal illness: it's like walking down a spiral staircase and coming to series of landings, each of them is a significant point of no return. (There is no treatment to make her better, and this is a matter of hospice).

The new "landing" on that staircase is this. My mother mostly doesn't recognize me or my wife anymore. My brother and his daughter came into town as of late, for July 4th. My mom looked up from her bed, at the both of them and asked, "Who are you people? Why are you standing over me?" That is, at best, a translation for words that cannot really be approximated or understood, totally. This is a case of tumors effecting how her brain functions, which also slurs her speech and makes it hard to really understand, at times.

I normally don't cry at this sort of thing anymore. All I tell myself is: "At least she's not in a lot of pain."