Thanks to all of you for the comforting messages, here, by PM, by email and phone. Pilot folks are the best, and you all are truly an extended family.
My mom had reached the point where the only thing keeping her alive was the ventilator, and all efforts to wean her from it were abject failures. There were other issues, as well.
She has always had a standing and absolute provision against being maintained past her time by artificial means, and we had clearly reached that point. Twenty-five years younger, perhaps, she might have gotten a new lung, but...
She was sedated and when the breathing tube was withdrawn, she slipped away quickly, a matter of minutes.
I had thought I could not bear to be in there, but I could not leave my father and sister alone with that, and I rejoined them with her. My sister, along with a dear family friend, were singing softly and sweetly, angels' voices, as she faded away, and I'll never know where my sister found her voice. My father held her hand, and Tommy and I held him.
Tommy had also chosen to leave the waiting room and be there with us, something I could never have done at his age.
She had hung in there for years longer than doctors had ever expected, and had been living life for most of that time, so she showed us all a thing or two. She was, mentally, all there to the end, but was in great discomfort all the time. Her struggle is over, but Lordy, we'll miss her.
Maybe I'll lure my Dad into coming to Gaston's; at 90, he'd surely be the oldest one there.
My condolences for your loss. Yet another from the "greatest" generation, gone....
Many were the stories she told of the depression and WWII years, then later the time when she and my Dad were in Europe with the Marshall Plan... friends in Paris who were French underground. The Greatest Generation, indeed.
Again, to all of you, thank you for your kind concern.
/s/ Spike
