Yesterday we lost my mum, it was in the end a relief, her body fought on after her mind had gone.
These are two things I wrote, a small obit and something I wrote not long ago about dementia.
It was likely a brief moment of lucidity we figured, she tried not to breathe. The hospital had called and said she'd taken a turn for the worse, she'd stopped breathing for two minutes. It wasn't the first time they'd called.
Dementia is a slow ebb, it leaches out the soul and the spirit and leaves the carriage, aimless, rudderless. It turns the grieving process into a chromatograph, stretched over years. When my father died and I was asked if I wanted to view his body I declined, the part I knew, the part I'd had a relationship with was gone. And so it is with my mum, it's her sinewy body that swam until not long ago, her bandy legs, her crooked but steady hands, but not her wise unshakable untiring good, not her clever understated humor, not her patient and loving motherness.
After what could be hundreds of little bleeds, strokes, TIA's they call them my mothers brain is riddled with holes, shot away. But unlike Bonnie and Clyde's car unbelievably, inexplicably, impossibly, it still contains life.
We can only guess, but we're pretty sure that if she had her wits, she'd be gone, but the incredible strength that we always suspected she had won't let go, it won't let her go. In our own ways we each assure her that "everything is taken care of, we've got it all sorted out" in the hope that her urge to watch over and protect us will be satisfied and she will die.
It's the hardest thing to say, we want her to die.
At about 4am this morning Fairlie Marie Stewart nèe Stubbs died in Tatura. Born in Shepparton in 1927 she married James Burt Stewart who she met at Shepparton High School, in 1950. Mother to Catherine Fairlie, John Galloway, Mary Primrose, Ruth Alison and James Lachlan she was the youngest of three after John and Myrrdin. She was Gran to Nirri Tomas William Hamish Duncan Alice José Grace Bede Ignatius Lachie and Cecilia.
She could run and swim or beat you at tennis and scrabble, she was selfless, funny and clever, conservative but fearless. A country girl, a nurse, a mother and friend to many more.
We all loved her very dearly.