03-30-2013 at 12:22 PM
March 18th, 9:53 a.m. The dreaded phone call came. I answered the
phone and heard my mother crying hysterically, “Bubbe died!” My initial
reaction was, “oh my God!” It’s a fact that even though one is
prepared for a loved one to die one is never prepared for the actual
event. It was only the day before that I had a visit with her.
March 17th, 2:30 p.m. It was a routine visit but different from the day
before. Today Bubbe seemed to be at peace. She was enjoying the fruit
sorbet smoothie I had brought her. She sipped it out of her straw so
fast that I had to remind her to sip slowly or she will get a brain
freeze. Her response was a familiar, “yes Ma’am”, that gave me total
satisfaction that she still had her sense of humor. There was no sense
of agitation except for when she appeared to have used every ounce of
energy to say, “Shuffle off to Buffalo.” It seemed as though she was in
pain trying to get the entire phrase out of her mouth. I didn’t know
the significance of this phrase but for some reason she said it often
and seemed to have a purpose because of all the effort put into saying
it. I sat with her for a few hours watching the food network “Chopped”.
I rubbed her arm and held her hand and at times she would squeeze my
hand. I acknowledged her awareness of my presence. Often she would
shout out, “I want a drink!” Even with the straw in her mouth she would
repeat herself, “I want a drink?” I was happy to be there to see that
her needs were met. Shortly before I left her aid came into her room to
clean her up and change her comforter that was dirty from her daily bed
bound meals. She also mentioned to me that my grandmother was having
what she suspected were Cheyne- Stokes respiration which is defined as
according to Wikipedia as ‘an abnormal pattern of breathing
characterized by progressively deeper and sometimes faster breathing,
followed by a gradual decrease that results in a temporary stop in
breathing.’ This cycle repeats itself and is known to be an indicator
that death is near by days. She expressed her concern and monitored my
grandmother overnight but she did fine and woke up the next morning in
the same sleepy state as the days before. With this new information I
informed my mother. I personally did not witness this during my visit
on this day.
After my grandmother was cleaned and comfortable with her clean
bedspread I noticed she was sleeping and I didn’t want to disturb her so
I quietly said, “Bye Bubbe I love you.” And, I left.
I was told the next morning she woke up and had breakfast, fell asleep, and died.
After receiving the phone call from my mother I panicked. It was spring
break and my kids were home from school. I felt the need to get to the
nursing home right away so I could say goodbye for the last time. I
scrambled to find a babysitter. I called my husband at work who said he
would be home as soon as he could. In the meantime my niece showed up
at my doorstep on her day off from school and early in the morning so
that I could be on my way. Thank you Becca!
I joined my mother, aunt and uncle and the hospice staff in my
grandmothers’ room. She lay on her bed as if she were asleep. I kissed
her on the forehead and said a few words to her that I know she could
hear one way or another.
The feelings we had were bittersweet. We were satisfied that Bubbe was
no longer in pain whether mental or physical and she was at peace. But,
at the same time we felt the loss of someone that had been a part of
our daily lives.
The funeral was two days later. I couldn’t find the words then but
since I found I was able to put my feelings best in a poem as I eulogize
my grandmother and friend.
“I want to go home”, “I want my mother”
Were things you often said,
That only meant one thing to me
It meant you would have to be dead.
I wasn’t sure if you knew
That you were going to die,
I was afraid to tell you,
Afraid of your reply.
The social worker said “She knows”
“She says it in her own way”,
“I suggest you tell her it’s ok
And take it day by day”.
I prayed for you to be at peace
I prayed for you to go,
I will quote Shakespears’ King Richard II
“So two, together weeping, make one woe”.
It was hard to say goodbye to you
As you left your earthly life,
But I want you to know it’s clear to me
Your love for me is rife.
We buried you the other day
And laid you down to rest
Beside the man you married
To whom your love you did confess.
(He really was the best)
After you were gone for good
I shed a lot of tears
I miss you more than anything
You were my best friend for years.
I feel a void of having you
A part of my daily routine
I know it will take time to grieve
On my family I will lean.
It’s funny how this story ends
Because of what I have learned
You always had a way with words
There came an awkward turn.
I remembered the words of the social worker
“She says it in her own way”
I never knew what you meant when you said “Shuffle off to Buffalo”
I thought it meant to go astray.
I got a funny feeling
You saw it clearly in your mind’s eye
In hindsight it’s ironic
This was your way of saying you were ready to die. (“Shuffle off to Buffalo” = ‘to die’)
Your being where you want to be
With your husband, mom and dad,
Gives me a sense of peace
You are no longer sad.
Over the course of the last few years of my dairying on the series
“Nursing Home Drama” there have been over 13,000 viewers. I want to
thank you for your support and hope that this drama has helped someone
who may have or are experiencing some of the same. I hope you continue
to read my blog “The Diary of a Private Investigator” as I continue to
diary my adventures. Please share this blog with your friends and LIKE
my facebook page at www.facebook.com/diaryofapi. 
03-19-2013 at 09:31 PM
Bubie died on March 18th at 9:50 a.m. Since my first blog posting
titled "Nursing Home Drama" on October 6, 2011 I have had the support of
thousands of readers who in many ways expressed their interest in my
grandmothers' well being. I appreciate the support and hope you
continue to read my blog. My final posting on "Nursing Home Drama" will
be coming soon as I reflect on the final days with my Bubie.
03-12-2013 at 06:46 PM
The other day during one of my visits I approached my grandmother
who was lying in her bed and bent down to kiss her and said "hello".
She responded by saying "peekaboo". I laughed.
I then sat down to eat my lunch and heard her say, "don't eat so much.
That's enough." This was deja vu. This is something she used to say to
me when I was an overweight child. This continued into my late teens
and I used to get so mad at her for saying it to me. It was hurtful and
insulting. One day she is stuffing food down my throat, not literally,
by feeding me sweets and the next she is telling me I eat too much. I
didn't know what to make of it except that she had the Jewish Mother
Syndrome not to say that there is anything wrong with Jewish mothers or
Italian and Greek for that matter. They're all the same. How could I
get mad at her now? It was nice to have a taste of the Bubie I once
knew. I get a little taste of it every now and then.
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03-08-2013 at 12:20 PM
It's been a few weeks since my last entry into my diary. I have
been very busy with life and lost track of time. Among other things
going on I have managed to get up to the nursing home several times in
the last month almost daily except for this last week. There is not
enough time in the day.
Now that she has been on permanent bed rest my grandmother seems to be
more rested than she was when the staff moved her around to put her in
her chair to sit at a dining room table to only put her head down to
sleep. Her eyes are closed 98% of the time and she sleeps 90% of the
time. The only time she is awake is for meal times and bath time. When
I visit her and bend down to kiss her she always manages to give me a
few kisses and tells me "your an angel" or "your a sweetheart". That is
about all she says to me. Sometimes I play music for her or I will
talk to her about my day. It's almost always a one sided conversation.
The 2% of the time that her eyes are open she is mostly looking up as if
she is looking for something or sees something that we cannot see and
her eyes do not open all of the way but just enough to see. And, when
she opens her eyes while looking in my direction I can tell she isn't
looking at me because although her eyelid may be open a quarter of the
way she is not focused on one thing and all I see is weakness. We
believe it is only a matter of days until my grandmother is with my
grandmother and her parents.
On one of my latest visits I fed her some soup and noticed every time I
incorporate vegetables in the soup she spit it out. I reported her
intake to her nurse and her nurse walked into her room, took a spoonful
of soup with a lot of vegetables and fed it to her. I didn't stick
around to see what happened after that but as I was leaving I heard my
grandmother have a short conversation with her nurse and apparently
after she swallowed the soup with vegies. I noticed the nurse had asked
her a lot of questions and my grandmother answered.
I will ask her questions on my next visit.
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02-26-2013 at 10:21 PM
The last few visits to the nursing home have been much of the same
as it has been in the last few weeks. My grandmother is now on complete
"bed rest" which means that she will remain in her bed for the rest of
her life. We elected to put her on bed rest based on the fact that the
majority of the time her eyes are closed and she feels disturbed when
she is touched and moved from her bed to her chair. She barely eats and
wants to sleep even while in her chair. Our goal is to keep her as
comfortable as possible.
In the meantime there is no lack of "entertainment" in the halls of the
100 wing of the nursing home. Her move from the "psych ward" by my
definition, the high risk wing by their definition was somewhat a
lateral move. The people in the psych ward including the Cabbage Patch
Lady, Santa, and the lady with the baby certainly acted as if they had
earned their status in this wing and the people in the 100 wing although
different in demeanor have similarly earned status that do not require
them to be locked up. For example in the 100 wing there are two
people that on separate occasions wheel themselves up and down the
hallways and sometimes into my grandmothers' room. The old bald man has a
very raspy and loud voice and when he raises his voice he comes across
as very mean especially when he tells people what to do. He sits with
the same lady at meal times and the same argument ensues daily. It's
always about the center piece on their table. They act like an old
married couple. The old lady who wheels up and down the hallways often
gets mad at the staff and blurts out, "what the fuck! what the fuck!
what the fuck!" and "That's bullshit! That's bullshit! That's bullshit!"
all as she wheels herself down the hallway nobody paying attention to
her, well, except for me obviously since I have quoted her here. :-)
Another lady who is apparently unable to speak communicates solely by
making this sound, "bah, bah, bah bah, bah" loudly. Another lady lets
out blood curdling screams as if she is being tortured with high voltage
electric shocks although I am not sure you could actually scream under
those circumstances. A better example may be that of giving birth to a
ten pound baby without any sedation or epidural. When I hear her
screams I cringe.
I don't know how they do it but I credit the staff that work in this
environment day in and day out. As far as Bubbe is concerned we will
continue to lover her and take care of her. Today when I went to see
her I walked over to her bed, put my hand on her shoulder, bent down to
kiss her and told her I was there. I asked her if she was alright and
she cried out "no!" I asked her in a very tender tone, "what's the
matter?" She replied in a weepy way, "I don't feel good." I assured
her that I and my mother were there and we would take care of her. We
are there everyday to comfort her and give her whatever she needs. We
learned that more than half of the people on this wing do not receive
any visitors.
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02-15-2013 at 12:13 PM
First I would like to address the many requests I received from
several readers who would like to know the names of the books I am
reading or have read referencing my last blog posting on 2/5/13, titled
"Bubbie Update". If you would like to contact me outside of this website
please send me a private message on any of my facebook pages including www.facebook.com/emotionalescape.com OR www.facebook.com/diaryofapi. I enjoy hearing from my readers.
1. To Heaven And Back written by Mary C Neal, MD (A true story about a
doctor who had a near death experience after almost drowning as a
result of a kayaking accident)
2. Journey of Souls written by Michael Newton PH.D. (This
hypnotherapist shares his case studies of life between lives. The life
that you live from the time you die until your next life on earth
begins)
These two books were amazing and if you read "To Heaven and Back" first
the second book "Journey of Souls" explains a lot about why things
happened the way they did in "To Heaven and Back".
Bubbe Update (notice the different spellings I use including Bubie and Bubbie. The correct spelling is actually Bubbe.)
I hate watching Bubbe suffer like this. Her half closed eyes, sunk in
cheeks and lack of teeth make her look old but the red hair reminds me
of the way she really looks when at her best. **sigh** Head down, eyes
closes trying to get into a fetal position in her high back wheelchair
is the sight I see when I first walk into the dining room where she sits
at a table with a plate full of food in front of her. What's the point?
She is not hungry and all she wants to do is sleep. Why even get her
up in the first place. It would be considered neglect if they didn't. I
guess leaving her in her wheelchair for indefinite amounts of time and
not responding to her calling out for help isn't neglect among other
things they fail to do that is just as important as feeding her. But, I
digress.
Hospice suggested we start to let her go and tell her it's alright to go
be with her mother and father. I have a hard time doing this because
it means I am telling her it's o.k. to die. In my mind even though I
want her to be at peace and if dying is the way to get there then I want
her to die but I don't want to say it to her face. (I hate watching
myself type this). "Bubbe, it's ok to go be with her mother and father.
They are waiting for you," means I have to tell her she is dying. At
these moments I wonder what is going through her mind. I wonder if she
knows she is dying. I wonder if she is resisting it. When my mother
tells her these things Bubbe doesn't respond but when she asks, "where
is my mother? I want to be with my mother" and my mother says, "it's
o.k. to go be with your mother" sometimes she will ask where her mother
is and not just her location but she wants an address it seems. How can
we be sure she acknowledges her fate and that her mind isn't playing
tricks on her? Even when my own father was dying I couldn't tell him it
was o.k. to go but instead told him that if he was in pain it was o.k.
with me for him to go in order to stop the pain. He fought to stay alive
until the very end and one of the last things I heard him say was that
he wasn't in pain. He died of Pancreatic Cancer in 2004. I suspect
that many people share my feelings about giving someone you care about
verbal permission to check out and is recommended by hospice and nurses
that care for terminal ill patients.
When hospice saw her yesterday they had not realized how much closer she
is to death than they had guessed a few days before. They suspect that
it is now more realistic to say it will be less than 2 weeks. Four
weeks ago they said the same thing but without confidence. The family is
anxious. It's like watching two cars moving at a slow pace heading for
a collision. You know they will have impact but you don't know how bad
the impact will be until after it happens. This properly describes the
way I am feeling at this time.
I thank goodness for you, my diary, for allowing me a place to vent and
log the events in the my life and the thoughts I have that I may not
otherwise be able to share face to face with another living being.
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02-05-2013 at 07:00 PM
For those that really know me they know I am a skeptic by nature
and by trade. I don't believe everything I hear or read and often
require evidence in order to consider the truth that I ultimately
believe. It’s my general rule that even if a person doesn’t believe
something someone tells them it is complimentary to keep our thoughts to
our self but our action or lack of response can sometimes be
misconstrue that as being naïve. If you follow what I am saying then
please keep reading. You must feel the same way I do and feel the
freedom to be yourself and not worry so much what others’ think and have
every reason not to worry what they think because who you are is not
fake but true and people love you because of that. Right? Right!
With that said I have always been intrigued with the supernatural and I
am a believer of life after death. I am not sure yet what that life is
but I believe there is something. I believe that “ghosts” as we
commonly call them do exist as well as God. Something somewhere created
the universe and if it was the big bang that created our universe then
something created the power for the big bang to have occurred. So, I
have been reading a lot of books for the last few months about life
after death and the journey of souls and what happens to them after we
“die”. My choices of books have been written by those that in my
opinion are qualified to give such information to me. I don’t know how I
choose them but I research the people that have written the books
before I read them and my “intuition” tells me which ones to read. So
far my choice of authors has coincidentally been doctors. After having
read the books I have read so far I wonder if there is such a thing as
coincidence. This leads me to ask the question, was I meant to read
these books?
As I sat with my grandmother in the nursing home and read my latest book
“To Heaven And Back” I witness her doing something that people in their
right mind do not do and then witnessed something even more bizarre the
next day. If you read my blogs then you know what I am talking about.
Those that are first time readers should read my blog of 1/24/13 to
catch up.
Since this occurrence her behavior has been up and down like a roller
coaster. She has had conversations with people we cannot see. Her eyes
are closed most of the time while she simulates stirring a spoon in a
pot and serving her guests at her dining room table. She has announced
the arrival of her mother and at the same time has a smile on her face
and shows a sense of calmness. During this occurrence she was not
consciously aware of our presence and only those that she could see with
her eyes closed. She would not respond to us or the nursing staff who
had to move her body from place to place during this 5 hour occurrence.
It’s as if she wasn’t in her body at all. That is when my mother and I
looked at each other and thought it was the end. She is getting closer
to death and stepping into whatever life waits for her. The downside
of the roller coaster was the next day when she was agitated and needed
an anxiety pill to help calm her. The day after that she was back to
having conversations with those we could not see but not as much as she
did two days before.
Several days have passed since and now the roller coaster has taken us
on a loop, upside down it seems. She is getting weaker by the day, her
eyes remain closed the majority of the time, and she has started to say
goodbye to us, in our minds, by telling us how much she loves and
appreciates us. Also, until now she has forgotten who is in the room
with her at any given time but now she seems to know when we are in the
room even with her eyes closed. It’s as if someone is there whispering
in her ear, “your daughter is here, she can help you get a drink of
water” or “your granddaughter is sitting right next to you” which
results with her telling me how much she loves me. She calls us by name
and tells us what she wants.
I know you may think it sounds like wishful thinking on our part or you
may even think of that word that I am not sure is real “coincidence”.
My license plate doesn’t read WHAT IF for nothing! What if it IS real?
What if everything we are seeing with our own eyes is divine
intervention? How do I know it's not?
You wouldn’t believe me if I told you the content of the books I am
reading and the amount of evidence or circumstantial evidence that has
been documented for the research these Dr’s report about. I have one
question for you. How could there be thousands of people scattered
across the earth none of which know each other researched by several
doctors including PhD’s and MD’s who report similarif not the same
events that occurred to their subject's during their alleged near death
experience or life after death occurrence one of which is a neurosurgeon
who experienced his own NDE and not believe any of it to be true? I am
trying to decide this for myself.
Before I step into my grandmothers’ room I wonder what I will see. I
can’t deny how exciting it is to see her act as if she is conversing
with her loved ones who have already passed and watch her prepare a meal
for her family as she so often did in her prime. I entertained the
thought that she has hallucinations and her brain is malfunctioning but I
can’t help wonder if there is something else going on that I can’t see.
Just because I want it to be true doesn’t mean I believe it is. If I
choose to believe it is it will be because it is. (Got it?)
Yesterday Bubbie was agitated and wanted to go home, wanted her mother,
and wanted to be left alone. Today, she slept most of the day getting
up only for meals. Still, the majority of the time her eyes are closed
and only after a short amount of soft food she does her best to get
comfortable in her wheelchair so she could sleep. Hospice has now
advised us she is in the process of dying but is not dying at the
current time. The family is wondering how much more suffering must she
endure. I will keep you posted.
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