I’m not dead yet
I went to the hospital early to see if I could help calm my mother’s anxiety as they were trying to back her off the vent completely. She was breathing too fast, so they kept her where she was and upped her sedatives again. In the meantime, I kept leaning in and saying, try to relax, breath deeply – and she kept trying to mouth complete thoughts through the tape and tube and I couldn’t understand a word of it – I felt like I was in ground hog day and this scene and my statements were just on an endless loop like they have been over the last 16 days, years, months? How long has it been?
I came back frustrated and T said it’s because I’m in the same mode I always am with my mother – trying to get her to do something that she doesn’t want to do.
Later I went to the grocery and a guy at the check out counter was wearing a black tee shirt that said I’m not dead yet. If I could understand what my mother was trying to say, it would most likely be that.