Harvest Moon Festival

We went to pick up the boat and drop it off to get winterized and found ourselves at the Ogden Harvest Moon Festival. It was a fun diversion! They had tons of activities for kids. If we had known it was there (or how much fun it was) we would have taken Khloe.

Sean and a magician.

Demi's wedding

At the end of August we went to Draper to Kylie and Brie's sister Demi's wedding. The kids were excited to see each other.

They had a band called "Strike". The kids thought that was about the coolest thing in the world and they danced like crazy.

Of course when we got ready to leave the party the kids did not want to part so we brought the girls home and they spent the night.

Pedicures and ukulele's

Steph is pregnant and feeling pretty crappy. She nauseated and barfing. No fun. Three more weeks and she will be done with the first trimester and hopefully feeling better. I went with them to an ultrasound and we saw the baby. It looks like a little gummy bear so I'm calling it the gummy baby.
Me, Steph, Khloe and Alika all went and got pedicures. 

Sean wanted to be in the ukulele club at school. He's gone a couple of weeks and he's not loving it. Don and I went and listened to class last week and we can understand why. There's a lot of kids and I think he's just lost with the group instruction.

He does like his ukulele. 

Khloe being silly.

Lagoon and sisters

While all my brothers and sister were here Sean went and stayed with Kylie and Brie. Troy stopped and picked him up on his way home from work on Friday. They went to Lagoon and Sean had a good time. He spent three nights there which was a really long time. He's never been away from us for three nights since we got custody of him. When we picked him up on Monday he was ready to come home. He said he had started to fight with Kylie and Brie. I like that he was able to spend that much time with them. 

Everyone rode the really scary rides except for Sean and Luke. Tough guys!

Epiphany

I've been....I'm not sure what I've been. Not OK. Guilt stricken, I guess. I could of/should of been a better daughter. More gracious, more patient..... Not rolled my eyes so much. Spent more time downstairs. Then I had guilt over the medications. When I increased mom's fentanyl I talked to the pharmacist and asked him if he thought it was too much. I specifically asked "could this kill her?" He said "anything could kill her but I doubt this will. It's the natural progression for medications." Still after toying with the meds and never getting it right I kept thinking maybe I should be doing something different. Even when she was dying I had the thought, maybe we should stop this. Give her some Narcan and everything will be OK. I knew that wasn't really an option but the thought did enter my mind. I thought this must be what Hospice was talking about when they said people get scared at the end and call an ambulance instead of Hospice.

Last week Lynn made a comment to me that he was "amazed at how I orchestrated mom's death with nothing but meds and oxygen."  Wow, I didn't realize I had orchestrated it. That kind of increased my guilt load but then again Lynn is great for saying really bizarre things. Two days ago Steph texted me. She was annoyed. Her relief society president came and brought her cookies and flowers and told her how Marian had borne her testimony in sacrament meeting about the power of the priesthood and said that John gave Grandma a blessing that she would be able to endure until the family was gathered. She said that when she was dying her sons gave her a blessing to help her facilitate her passing. Steph said she couldn't help but laugh and think it was the oxygen and the medicine that helped her endure until the family gathered and facilitated the passing. Which, I guess is in essence what Lynn said.

I just started thinking about how much mom wanted to die and how she was tired of suffering and not being able to do anything she wanted. She couldn't read anymore because she couldn't hold a book and she complained because there was nothing worth watching on television. She didn't like food anymore. She lived longer than she wanted. She didn't die in a nursing home, she didn't die in a hospital, she didn't fall out of bed or off the toilet and die alone on the floor. She died in her bed with all her kids, a bunch of grandchildren with her. It's really alright, I'm alright.

Two weeks

Time sure marches on. I've worked a lot this week. I still cry but I've been functional. I forgot to post mom's birthday picture from her 88th birthday.

She was too tired to come upstairs for her cake so we took it downstairs. Art and Char were here. We'd taken her out to dinner for her birthday. She had told me a couple of days before that she wanted to go to Red Lobster but when we got there she said it wasn't where she wanted to go. We thought maybe it was McGrath's fish house in Layton but that is closed. She didn't eat much and didn't like it. The last two months she'd lost pretty much all joy in food. Occasionally something would taste OK but not usually. The last week she wasn't even really enjoying her nightly ice cream cone. She did like the ice cream cake. When someone asked her who decorated it she said "a printer." It had one of those sugar, computer printed flower scenes on it.

One Week

It's been a week and I'm still in a bad place. I think I'm just shocked at how awful I feel. I honestly believed I would be OK with mom dying. She's been telling me she wants to die for a long time. A couple of weeks ago she asked "when is this going to be over?" and when I asked what, she said "my life." She also told me she had so many chances to die and she couldn't believe she was still alive. She was sick and tired of being sick and tired. That said I can't go very long without something making me cry. Ice cream at the grocery store, tapioca pudding, the butter dish........

Sunday we had breakfast and a gathering at the house before everyone headed back to NC, Alabama, Maryland and wherever else they were going. We will go to Maryland sometime in October to bury her ashes next to Dads.