On Dying

My Mom’s Death

By Joyce Ripley

On September 24, 2002, I flew to BC from NB to be with my mother who was in palliative care and dying of ovarian cancer. I planned to stay for two weeks. In 1963 my mother, Esther, married G and they raised his children, A and S). I am my mother’s only natural daughter from her first marriage.

Ten days after arriving at Mom’s, I noticed that things were not right. Not only had Mom begun wearing a morphine patch to control the pain, but when I offered to help Mom in any way, such as fetching her a glass of water, G got very upset and wouldn’t let me do it. I said to him that all he had to do was tell me what he wanted. He mumbled something. During this time Mom would have days when she was so medicated that she had difficulty speaking; the rest of the time she could carry on a conversation quite well.

Finally, when G continued to show his annoyance, I asked him why he hated me. He got very angry and denied it. He said he never held a grudge. Then Mom, who looked so ill, asked him why then he said so many negative things about me. The anger escalated and became a shouting match between us. G was still angry the next day and left the house saying he was never coming back. When G came back the next evening, I went to my room downstairs and decided to take the early morning bus (4:30 am) to Edmonton to see my daughter.

On the phone later, I apologized to G for my outburst. Mom asked me to come back so I moved into a motel about 20 minutes from Mom’s house. I went to see her every day. S would come about every second week to see her Dad. She told me I could stay in the house, but I declined.

Mom and I had some good times visiting in October. She asked me to pack up a cabinet full of ceramic dolls that she had made and given to her granddaughter. I did that and put them in storage. G became more and more agitated about Mom wanting to give her belongings to others. He and his son bullied Mom until she asked me to return a picture she had painted and given to my daughter.

Mom and I often privately discussed G’s behaviour and tried to understand him. One day he and S had a major blow-up with Mom. S turned angrily on Mom because Mom had said S tried to control everything when she visited. G let S rage on at Mom. Then G turned to me and said I had to go. He suggested that I go back home to NB for two months. That didn’t make sense to me so I decided to stay because of their belligerence.

I continued to visit Mom twice a day. When we were alone we had a good time together talking about dying, painting pictures together, or just being together when she was sleeping. We told each other many times how much we loved each other. We became closer because we never knew when I would be forbidden to see her.

In November as Mom became more confined to her bed, G said I could move into the house again to be near her. One night I heard mom talking so I asked the home care person if it was all right if I visited with Mom. She said, Yes.

The second night that I visited, G unexpectedly came into the Mom’s bedroom fuming with anger. He yelled at me to get out right now and to pack my bags in the morning and leave the house. Mom’s medication made her unable to cry, but she told me that she would have cried for my distress that night if she could. I stayed with Mom until she went to sleep. Later that day, S confronted me and said I should leave the house. She ranted on and her father joined her. They called me a manipulator because I had asked the nurses about Mom’s care.

That evening I decided to barricade the door of my bedroom. I was only in bed for about 10 minutes, when a policeman hammered on the door. I refused to open it so he broke the door down and told me to pack up. S and G had called the police to remove me. They refused to let me say goodbye to Mom. I went back to my motel room.

In December Mom became confined to her bed. I chose to visit her six hours a week when no one else was there. I wrote G a letter of apology and asked for more hours to visit. He gave them to me but I had to phone him every morning to ask permission to visit for two hours.

On Christmas day, my daughter and I visited Mom. Mom asked me to lift her up so she could sit on the side of the bed. I did this. G came storming into the room and told us we had overstayed our welcome. S placed Mom back down on the bed and told her she wasn’t to get up.

The next day G told me if I ever touched my mother in any way, I would never see her again!

Fortunately, the day after that the doctor moved my mother into a care facility. The nurses drew up separate schedules for us. We were each given nine hours a day to visit Mom.

Eleven days later, on January 7, 2003, my mother died a very hard death—for nine hours she listened to her own death rattle until her lungs filled with fluid. Her ordeal began when she witnessed the disintegration of her family and ended with her losing struggle to breathe. Thus her universe was twice torn asunder.

(Joyce Ripley is Esther’s only flesh-and-blood daughter. She is an artist living in New Brunswick.)