My Mom just died.

I guess you recall me posting my Dad (the NASA aerospace engineer) had died on Nov. 24th, 2021. My Mom has passed today at 81 years old. I lost both my parents in a two month span. It's so unfathomable and the grief is horrible. I was definitely still processing my Dad's death and we didn't expect this.

Her body just failed to where she couldn't swallow or move. So, you just use morphine for pain. I said my goodbyes yesterday and it was the hardest thing I ever had to do. She went out just like my Dad...in bed on Morphine and basically comatose. It's so freaking hard to watch a love one go out like that. I never got a chance to have a last conversation with her.

My Mom was the best person I knew. She grew up in Monetta, South Carolina in a rural area in a house next to a train track that would roar through every morning (as kids, we used to squash pennies putting them on the track to be run over). She was surrounded by close family growing up with parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, etc. and had a good life.

After high school, she attended nursing school in Charleston, SC....where she met my Dad and they fell in love. I mentioned in the other thread...my Dad used to drive from Virginia to Charleston every weekend back then to see her...a 500 mile drive each way. Upon graduation, she became a registered nurse, married my Dad, and moved to Langley, VA so Dad could work at NASA in the real early days. She was beautiful in her wedding photos and just gave off a vibrance. You could see why my Dad was so smitten.

They eventually moved to Clear Lake City as Dad's job took him to work at Johnson Space Center. She worked in hospitals, as an EMT on an ambulance, and even saved a person off-duty in a vehicle accident stopping his profuse bleeding until help could arrive. From there, she developed a passion with antiques (my house was like an antiques museum growing up) and loom weaving. She bought and brought big Swedish looms into our house...even expanding the house to accommodate their size. She became a passionate and well-known weaver making rag rugs and other types of rugs. She was very good at it and won an award for her technical weaving (I'm inheriting the piece that won) written up in the Houston Chronicle newspaper. She used to have a booth at the Round Top Art Festival where she sold them and sold them out of her antiques shop in Houston back in the day.

She loved helping people. She loved to talk to people. She used to do volunteer work. She taught weaving on smaller looms to mentally handicapped children. She loved dogs. I own her dog now. The dog survived both my parents. It's all I got now. She loved to cook. She organized parties in her prime and was the life of the party.

Late in life wasn't kind to her. She got bi-polar disease at 65. Unfortunately, the bi-polar changed my Mom because that's what it and the meds do. She went from an avid reader and outgoing person to not reading and being tired all the time. And, she had chronic back problems. She was on 15 different medication pills daily for a long time. She was in and out of hospitals towards the end. It all just wore her out and she passed at 81. The bi-polar robbed her of some years for sure.

I thought it would be right to let you all know how special she was...especially after sharing here about my Dad lost to Alzheimer's. The world lost the kindest person who would help anybody on this Earth. And, I lost the best Mom I could ever have hoped for.

Enjoy your parents if you still have them. I'm going to go say a prayer for my Mom now.

 

It's weird because the last few years...my Dad was totally out of it. But, he was still there and you made do with what you had left of him. He still had some character left. But, in reality, we lost my Dad about four years earlier when he changed overnight. So, I'm not sure that qualifies as going close-together. Selfishly, we wanted my Mom to be around longer obviously. She was well taken care of.

Thanks all for your words and support.